The world has changed so much in the five years since I was 18. As a thought experiment, here’s what I would do if I lost all existing resources (network, money, skills, back in my hometown) and had to start over.

Going to College

I probably wouldn’t go to college. I dropped out after two years, and was 50/50 on going in the first place. I just don’t think the cost:benefit ratio is there anymore. The promise used to be: go to college > get educated > get a job > happy life > american dream. That promise has become less true over time and we’re seeing it with [rising levels of new-grad unemployment](https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market).

I can’t say for sure it’s any different for people who don’t go to college. But if you’re somewhat smart and, more importantly, motivated to make something of yourself, college likely isn’t the best place for you to learn useful skills.

What it is good for is the social environment and having a sandbox to mess around in. Friendships and happy marriages are good for the soul, and you’re pretty likely to start them there compared to the rest of your life. College is also a great place to f*ck around and find out, to try things and meet people you normally wouldn’t. Most people fondly mention going on exchange, as well as certain clubs and the people they met through them. Barely anyone I know talks about what they learned.

For me, I also couldn’t justify the cost, so unless I got a scholarship or into a great school outside of my typical bubble like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, or maybe out of province Canadian schools like UBC and McGill, I wouldn’t go. Instead, I’d use the 4 years to recreate the experience in the aggregate.

Getting a job with no skills

I’d think of work like college. Which means thinking about where I could learn the most and meet the most interesting people. If I didn’t have a strong idea of what I wanted to learn, I’d try to maximize learning overall by joining companies based on what industries I think would grow like crazy or what companies my smartest friends are working at and talking about. I’d likely work at startups over big companies, since being 1-25% of the company means you have more demanded of you, whereas it’s easy to get lost in the machine of a BigCo and do very little work.

At 18, I already had a bit of coding experience, but definitely not enough to be useful to a company at this point. The learning happens on the job. Landing a job with no skills seems like where young people get tripped up a lot, but it’s probably not as hard as you think. People love mentoring young people as long as they feel like they actually made an impact, so it’s your job to convince them the experience won’t be lost on you.

In any industry, all people are looking for is someone who can do the job. As in, someone who makes the company more money than they receive in salary. At 18, this is basically impossible. But companies make R&D investments all the time, which is what you will be if a company hires you at this stage. Handing in a resume with nothing on it will not be very convincing. The way to prove you can do the job is by _actually doing the job_ as your way of applying for it.

No matter how polished a company looks on the surface, there’s always a dumpster fire under it. To apply for a job, look for a problem and offer a solution. Make sure it’s as well thought out as possible, think about potential obstacles and how to solve them, and put together some sort of visual demo of your solution. Make it as real as possible. If you’re looking for a coding job, your solution should be an interactive demo like a website, not a Github repo. That’s fake. If you’re going for a writing position, write something they’d like to publish. If you’re looking for a design role, do an annotated critique in Figma, or a redesign of the company’s assets.

Act like you already have the job, put effort into really trying to identify a problem and figuring out a solution to it. Be really useful, or at least fully aim to, then find the email of whoever’s hiring for the job. If it’s a startup, email the CEO and cc anyone relevant directly. If you can’t find the hiring manager’s email, email the CEO. Busy people respond the fastest. Follow up 1-4 times on an exponential decay time curve. If you can’t find these emails, you don’t deserve the job.

In the email tell them, briefly, why you’re interested and show them the initiative you took to find and solve a real problem for them. The bar is so incredibly low that a little bit of motivation to do a good job and a decent cold email goes far. No more than 5 lines, clear ask, use line breaks, attach a link I can view instantly (no requesting permissions), and you’re ahead of 90% of people. When I was hiring, I would’ve instantly given an interview to anyone who did this to me, and would’ve never even considered asking for their age or resume.

Doing what you really want to do

People often say youth is wasted on the young. I think they say this because old people are haters. They’ll say it’s because time and experience comes with age and by the time you know how to use your vitality, you’ve lost it.

Which is fair, but another reason is that young people are poor. A lot of what I want to do costs money, and so the great part of starting work early is having money saved up to do what you want. Of course your early career should mainly be about the learning, but money is a nice byproduct.

Money buys time and freedom, which is what youth implies anyway, but more so. It’s important to live as cheaply as possible for as long as possible, so I wouldn’t recommend buying luxury goods even if it’s what you think you really want. That money’s really best spent on stuff that’ll make you see the world a different way. Think plane tickets, camera gear or a guitar if you’re into that, a nice laptop, anything that contains a world inside it. You want the things you buy to have the potential for infinite use. I definitely recommend moving out of your parents’ house ASAP, your growth is capped there.

You have to keep doing stuff you like. It’s not about what you own but what you do with it, getting gear just helps with that. Maybe the best thing right now to buy for a motivated young person is a $200/month ChatGPT subscription. The entire internet is locked away in there, ready to teach you anything without getting tired of answering your questions. So is a billion dollars if you press the right keys in the right order.

Try to do everything you want to do in a public way somehow. I’m not saying don’t keep moments to yourself, but a little bit of public documentation or externalizing your thoughts goes a long way.

A lot of good things can happen when you’re known but not necessarily famous. It’s just a tool for opening more doors and making more friends, especially if you skip out on college. I made all my friends on the internet so when I moved to San Francisco, it was a no-brainer because I already had a huge community there from spending so much time on Twitter.

Having friends with the same interests rather than just who you randomly spawned in with in your hometown can completely change how you think about yourself and the world.

Beyond that, you’ll likely make better stuff if it’s public. Being forced to fully bake your creations for the world will push you further than you could’ve taken yourself. Creating in obscurity is nice because no one can tell you your work isn’t a masterpiece, but having haters builds character. Having your work impact people touches you in a way just making it can’t. Opportunities might come your way that you didn’t even know existed. I got my last job because the company’s CTO found me on Twitter.

Today everyone’s an influencer and everything’s content, which can become draining on our actual lived experiences. Yet I still think it’s quite positive as long as we:

1) remember to create more than we consume

2) create as a byproduct of our experiences rather than experience things to show them to someone else

The benefits far outweigh the costs, and the costs are mitigable. We can’t be too afraid of what’s three miles down the road that we don’t even take the first step. No great artist is obscure, because if they were really that great, they’d be known. Worst case, you have a log of memories to look back on when you’re old.

Beyond that, try to do new things often. Happiness is pretty easy once you make it beyond your bedroom door and off your phone. Travel a lot. Stay up late talking to people. Try things even if they’re not halal. Say yes more than you say no, and really scrutinize why you’re saying no, since you’re probably overestimating the downside. Be nice to everyone, you have no idea what people are going through. Get your heart broken. Host stuff. Everyone loves the host, no one likes organizing. Play a team sport. Practice an art form. Experience what it’s like to eat clean, get really strong, and sleep perfectly. Then throw it all away and have fun. Ideally both, but I’d rather have life in my years over years in my life. Make dad (or mom) lore.

Spending time with people

Ideally you spend time with people you like, and away from people you don’t like. This will likely not come to you instantly, but worth looking for. Don’t trust anyone that tells you to network. Find and replace “networking and building connections” with “making friends”. Everything good in my life career-wise has come from my friends. Make your own nepotism.

Finding my people felt like meeting people who congratulated me when I said I got laid off rather than asking if I was okay. People who start brainstorming when presented with a crazy idea rather than claiming it won’t work. People who cared if I didn’t show up to a group hang. I have friends like this in Canada as well, but so many more in San Francisco. Having these people in your life, who make you insntantly feel cool and comfortable, can do wonders to build up your confidence. Knowing what a good friendship feels like helps you ignore anyone who makes you feel less than. They’re not worth the energy.

Life is filled with pain and suffering but friends make life worth it. It’s not about the journey or the destination, but about the company. To find them takes a fairly simple but slow optimization process of meeting people and paying attention to how you feel around them. Are you contracting or opening up your chest around them? Do you feel light or heavy? Do the hours pass like minutes? Do you like looking at their face or do they look kind of slappable?

I’ve had a couple friendship breakups. I truly believe you can be friends with anyone, but sometimes you’ve gotta move towards ease rather than tension. You only have a finite amount of time and most of the time you know who you like and who you don’t if you’re honest with yourself.

You could probably make a list right now of who you care about then spend all your time with them. They’ll likely also lead you to their other friends who you’re more likely to get along with than the average stranger. I’ve only ever made a handful of friends randomly, the rest were mutual friends I befriended. You should spend more time with people you’re close to, not less. Yet young people especially try to make as many friends as possible and spread their time and energy so thin they don’t have any left for the people that matter. The older I get, the less friends I have, and the happier I am.

It also helps to be yourself when you meet someone, so the people that are looking for you can find you. Forget trying to be a camouflaged version of yourself tailor made to fit into a social situation. Be unapologetic about your personality while being receptive to feedback from those close to you. Often they can see things you’re blind to and help you in ways you can’t. Repay the favour by trying to do the same for them, without forcing your opinion onto them too much.

Maybe not for everyone but also, call your mom. Ideally every day, but definitely on some cadence. 10 minutes doomscrolling will mean nothing to you but a 10 minute call will make her day. She should know when she’s going to talk to or see you next, even if it’s in a long time. Tell her, “I’ll visit in six months” or “I’ll call you in two weeks” and keep your word. Or update her if you can’t. Just make sure she has something to look forward to. Do this for yourself, not her, because it’ll make you feel good in the soul.

Keep showing up

A successful entrepreneur I know mentioned he had a group of friends that all started doing startup stuff in their early 20s. Some people quit a few years in, but everyone who stuck at it for 8-12 years had some outsized outcome.

You can do anything you want but it’ll always take longer than you expect. Take breaks as needed, that’s totally fine, but also you can recover much faster than you think. Every time I think I need half a year off, I’m usually bored after 2 weeks. Just make sure you keep coming back. If you aren’t excited about what you’re working on, switch! Chances are, you can always go back to whatever you were doing before, so the downside is really low.

Show up on the days even when you don’t feel like doing anything. A lot can happen in three months if you show up every day. 12 weeks. 84 days. I’ve seen [people turn their entire lives around](https://buildspace.so/sf1) in that time. Get a friend to help you out. Call them when you’re stuck in bed feeling lazy. Send out weekly updates with whatever you’re thinking to some close friends. Find a WeWork that’s empty on the weekends and [get your friends together to work on projects](https://luma.com/wosp-to) you’ve been procrastinating together.

Every day, there’s one thing you can do to make it a win. On your lowest of days, even getting a 10 minute walk in is progress, or writing one paragraph, or one line of code. Momentum is everything, and every little bit of work you put in now will pay dividends as you take on bigger more ambitious and harder projects later in life.

Work really hard now and learn to love it, because another one of life’s great joys is having work that feels like play. Bonus points for getting to work with your friends on stuff. Again, you can probably make a list of stuff that feels like play to you. Do it as much as you can every day, even if it doesn’t make money, and do it in public so opportunities and friends can find you.

Some more (mainly career focused) guides I think are good

• What I would do if I was 18 now - Levels.io

• Guide to Career Planning - Marc Andreessen

• Career Decisions - Elad Gil

Hope this helps someone!

If you’re seeing this twice, forgive me. I originally posted on my site aadillpickle.com but x-posted here because the content is more life-y so thought folks here might like it. Also it follows an unofficial series I seem to have started of giving advice to my younger self. Earlier posts here and here.

Usually, I feel like every year of my life has been better than the last.

I often look back at myself and cringe, which is great because that means I’m learning and growing so much. But in the moments, I feel like I’m doing the best I can.

This year was not that. This year, I was doing shit and I knew it. December 2024 was God testing my strength and was the worst I’d felt in conscious memory (since I was about 16). The 4 main things in my life are always work, family, friends and romantic relationships, and each had some crazy shift that month.

At the start of the year, I felt like I was going to enter my villain arc. Everyone hates me anyway so might as well. I’m gonna get super rich and jacked and “who cares about other peoples feelings? I gotta look out for number 1” was kind of what was going through my head for a bit.

That, coupled with feelings of self-hatred, led me to kind of just… disappear for a few months. Not physically, I still went outside and stuff, but I was just not present the way I normally am. I simultaneously felt like everyone would be better off without me, but also so desperately didn’t want to be lonely.

By about April, it became clear to me that I was actually going through a redemption arc. I had committed some serious emotional crimes and, after much wallowing and self-pity, realized that I wanted to make up for them with community service rather than jail time.

It might sound like I’m setting this up for a surprise twist. Like, “And that’s how I realized that 2025 actually WAS the best year, even though I didn’t know it at the time.” No. It really f*cking sucked. Changing is so hard! Even when I want to! And I’m never really sure if I’ve changed at all in the moment, or if I just removed the stimulus that made me act out. Change is a constant in life, but also at a given point in time, I can never grasp it if I tried to.

Only in this past month I started to see it was kind of a blessing being so down, because hitting the wall made me open to so many new things my stubborn ass never would’ve tried before. I was way too up on borrowed confidence before, thinking I was too good to make a fool of myself, when everything really good and memorable in my life has started out by doing something “cringe”. Like:

• making youtube videos again

• doing a 5 min standup comedy set in front of 40 people

• going to China and trying to communicate and get around and haggle in Chinese (they stared, laughed, and took pictures with me)

• quitting a job I didn’t care for right after getting my visa

• saying “I love you” to my parents

• writing A LOT

Most of those things I’d wanted to do for years, and part of feeling socially isolated for a bit was I dropped the bit where I felt like I needed to impress anyone. I mean, if no one’s around anyway, no one’s there to see me screw up, so might as well try. Nothing needs to have rhyme and reason because I don’t need to explain it to anyone else anyway. No one’s asking.

Then a funny thing happened. People started paying attention. To the things that I didn’t even care or want people to pay attention to.

Anything I made that I wanted people to look at would get… *crickets*. Like I started making YouTube videos again, put in weeks of filming and editing, and came back to 100 views. Then a blog I wrote in an hour went Hacker News viral. I wrote a blog about selling to engineers, hoping to get noticed by some startup that’d hire me as a tech sales person, posted it on Hacker News and again… *crickets*. Then I hung out with my friend for a week and wrote about what I think makes him special and all of a sudden all the famous Twitter people are in my DMs. I didn’t even think it was that good! Like it was good, but everyone else thought it was GREAT, and I’m thinking “guys I have better pieces out… go read those too…”

It was to the point where I felt like anything I held too tightly had the life squeezed out of it, and that was palpable to everyone watching. I’ve long said my preferred state is toiling away in obscurity. When people are watching, I get nervous and can’t translate my brain into the world without distortion anymore. But if no one's watching, it’s all for me, and I can just make what I think is good.

I’ve made stuff that’s gotten attention before and always stopped it for that reason, even though I didn’t know it at the time. A watched pot never boils and a watched aadillpickle never toils.

I have a feeling this time is different though. Even though a good number of people are watching. Because:

a) Earlier last year in April, as a way to inject some structure into my life after some late night frustration, I started writing weekly logs about what I’m up to and thinking about. I sent it to some friends mostly to keep me accountable and a little bit to stay connected. We’re 38 logs deep now with only one missed week, and it’s something I look forward to almost every week. No matter what happens, I’m going to keep writing that log. Not want or need or have to, I just will. I never know what I’ll write about til I do, I never know my thoughts until they're on the page, and I realized making stuff with that intention is what I want to keep doing. I want to see what I pull out of myself because I have a jungle up here filled with lost treasure. “Got presents in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault.” It really isn’t for anyone else anymore, and I’ve proven that to myself 38 weeks in a row , because I was writing it even when no one was liking or commenting.

b) I used to say “I have to” a lot. Like if I commit to something publicly, I have to do it. Now, I don’t care. I’m already naked. There is no more shame left if I commit to something and don’t do it. Even saying this now, even saying this time is different, I still don’t care if somehow I stop writing and creating, because I know it’s all part of the path. That ability, that feeling in my hands that everything is on the path, and not holding myself tightly to anything is actually what lets me loosen up rather than holding things so tightly I crush them. Letting my mind flow through my hands in everything I do, and if one day my mind and hands truly choose to do something else, that’s fine. I trust them.

Everyone always asks how my parents react to all the things I do that are the opposite of a good Asian son, like dropping out of college, changing jobs so frequently, or moving to San Francisco with no plan, money or visa.

I told my mom I quit 6 weeks ago then asked her how she felt about it. Her response then sums it up best:

“Me? I’m fine. You always find something. You have given us so many shocks in the the past few years. Now we are shock-proof.”

It took a few years to here, but her thinking finally somewhat lines up with mine now. I’m shock-proof. Might as well play with some electrical sockets.

A big change this year is I started believing in the universe. Before, I was fully a man of science and prided myself on cynicism, but now I know it’s much more fun to believe. In that spirit, here’s some stuff I’m putting out into the world for the new year:

• I will be allowed to live in San Francisco legally as a non-immigrant alien

• I will make an income enough to pay my living expenses in San Francisco without a W-2 job

• I will publish 100 pieces of work publicly on the internet next year, be it writing or video or whatever, in addition to the private daily logs

• I will get a Twitter payout

• A Fortune 100 CEO will somehow engage with SF Alexandria

• I will hit a devious lat spread

• I will make 100 pieces of pottery, and sell at least 1 piece to a stranger

• My wonderful friends and I are going to create epic dad lore

I know a lot can happen in a year, but I’ll admit: even writing these down right now, I don’t full believe they’ll happen. But if you read out the story of my life to 16 year old me, he wouldn’t believe it either.

The biggest part he wouldn’t believe is all the friends that feel like family I have around. How I get to spend each week hanging out with them, making memories we’ll talk about on rocking chairs 30 years from now. Looking back on my year, I can’t believe so much joy took place among all the chaos. Every single scary thing I did, I had someone in my corner with a towel and water bottle pushing me to get back out there and tending to me when I was KO’d. Every single goal I put up there is directly tied to a friend who pushed me to dream it up in the first place1.

This year I want to do more for and with my friends, because that’s the best part of every year. I want to be the friend that ropes people in, and do for them what they’ve done for me, without holding on so tightly. I want to be the catalyst that makes people realize they can do more than they previously thought possible, by doing what I want so unapologetically that everyone is freed up to be themselves. “And as [I] let [my] own light shine, [I] unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” I want to care so deeply that caring becomes cool again à la Timothee Chalamet.

I look back and think about how sad a lot of my writing was, how confused and scared I was, and how many people reached out saying how much they resonated. I felt great about that, being able to give people catharsis by following along with my journey. To give off the vibe that, “yeah honestly I don’t know what I’m doing, and nobody else does either, so here’s me figuring it out in real time, so you can too.” I hope to carry a similar vibe forward except with a 2 small alterations.

We’re still figuring it out, but we’re:

a) unburdened by what has been

b) confident it will all work out, because it always does, or else we wouldn’t be here right now

Anyway, from the depths of my soul, to everyone who’s reading this right now:

THANK YOU.

When I started writing on the internet 7 years ago I never thought more than me, my mom and my friends would read it, let alone tens of thousands of internet strangers. I have started keeping a wall of love with all the nice messages people send me to look at in times of despair and remember that what I do matters, and that the world is pulling for me to keep pouring my soul into it. Imma keep it up. Hopefully you do too, in whatever it is you choose to care about. Just make sure you care about something. Cue Japanese hot dog man:

Ganbate!!!

—Aadil

Note: Bit longer of a post so it doesn’t fit in the email view but it’s mostly pictures. So open it in Substack, treat it like a picture book, and enjoy!

There’s this 441 page slideshow that went viral recently. It talked about social media signals - what’s in, what’s out, what’s coming in, what has the opportunity to be in, how people feel about all of that, and generally what the vibes are on the internet nowadays.

I thought it was the best thing I’ve read all year. I spent hours pouring over this because I’m a huge geek when it comes to understanding how humans think and relate to each other, and social media is probably the main way everyone my age does that now. I ended up saving about 30 slides in particular that made me stop and think for a bit.

1) Main character syndrome is taking over

I never heard about main character energy before 2 years ago, and now it’s everywhere. It was kind of empowering at first but now it just seems like a nicer way to say “selfish”. I get the point - appreciate your life more and have the faith that everything will work out. But no one can ever touch the main character, and everyone else is less important than them, which is a pretty shit way to live when most of my best times haven’t happened alone. Putting yourself above everyone else is a great way to never feel like you have any equals, which is super isolating.

2) The process behind the art matters as much as the art

BTS videos do orders of magnitude better than the actual video sometimes. People want to know the why before they know the what. Taylor Swift’s new album launched with a “movie” that had her talk about the process of each song and the music video before they were played. This is likely in response to most of the world being afraid of AI, and to know the artist’s intentions makes media much more enjoyable than knowing it came from the black box slop factory.

BTW, Charli XCX’s substack is actually pretty good. Even she talks about how important it is to make the audience feel involved now as an artist.

3) We’re all tired of brainrot

Everyone knows social media is bad for them, but like cigarettes, you can’t quit so easily. To the point where there’s whole movements to reset your brain and regain your childlike sense of wonder. Dopamine fasts were around years ago too, but now it’s hit mainstream, and it’s not just about sitting still and doing nothing but actually enjoying what you consume.

Social media used to be fun and weird and being chronically online felt like being part of a cool secret club. But now that the smartest people in the world are working their hardest to get you hooked so you can swallow their ads with no chaser, no one’s having fun anymore.

Speaking of cigs…

4) Cigarettes are in.

Legitimately how did we get back here. I’ve never smoked in my life but even I keep seeing short form content that makes me want to try it. Friends are legitimately addicted. Maybe it’s that vaping was in and people wanted something stronger, but I think it’s more that cigarettes are legitimately cool now. They make you look cool, having wine and a cigarette is cool, Europe and Asia are cool and they smoke, skinny cigs are cool, taking smoke breaks is cool because going outside is cool (since everyone’s so online). So it’s a lot of little compounding factors that spilled over into cigarettes entering mainstream culture again. If I wasn’t so against supporting things I don’t want to see in the world, buying tobacco stocks would probably be a pretty lucrative move right now.

5) Anytime there’s culture, there exists an opportunity for counter-culture.

Culture is cyclical, and everything that’s old becomes new again, which is why we’ll see mom jeans and dad shoes trending til the end of time. Once you internalize this concept you see it everywhere. Being online was in on the early internet, now everyone does it, so going outside and dopamine fasting (doing nothing) is in. Fast paced jump cut content was in because of Tiktok, but now people are deliberately slowing down their content and making it longer to combat overstimulation.

Walking is in. Run clubs are in. So my friend Danielle decided to make a “Sit Club” that 1000 people showed up to in San Francisco. It was hilarious and got a ton of press and social media attention, because running and walking were already in the zeitgeist so everyone’s primed to understand the joke.

You can also take what’s in but put it in a place people don’t expect. Like bathhouses are entering culture as a third space beyond bars and restaurants to hang out at, but hosting a corporate event at one is incredibly counterintuitive, which is exactly why people will talk about it.

6) Being weird is so in.

Speaking of counter-culture, when a pattern is too established, people start to hate it no matter how good it is. Like a song being overplayed, everyone intuitively knows the pattern of every single form of content they doom scroll to a tee. So when something disrupts that, and it’s somewhat interesting, funny, or causes you to mentally say “WTF”, it feels like a breath of fresh air. This works especially well for brands because people have more solid preconceived expectations around them.

I don’t give half a shit about Ramp, On or Birkin but these promos are genuinely pretty cool, and I’ll remember them for breaking the mold. The reason ads that look like ads don’t work is because they’re forgettable. The best ads make you remember something you previously didn’t care about at all, so that when it’s time to make a buying decision you’re already primed.

7) Create what you live in

Every lifestyle vlog feels a little off to me because I wonder if they actually live like that or they’ve started living a life that looks good to a vlog. I personally don’t call myself a writer even though I write every week, because I’m just a guy who lives and happens to write when I feel like thinking through something a bit more.

The best art comes from drawing on personal experiences. Write what you know and all that. I love Timothee Chalamet’s promo for Marty Supreme. I don’t even think of it as promo. I’m super excited for this movie, and I’m not even a Chalamet fan, but he promotes that movie like he promotes himself because he’s all about the pursuit of greatness just like the main character of the movie.

I often get sidetracked when making stuff thinking about what’s trending and what’ll grab attention. But my stuff that circulates the most and resonates the most with people is when I talk about my feelings, or if I myself am laughing while making the thing. Like Charli XCX says, “If it doesn’t come from a truthful or meaningful place for the artist […] the work is totally fucking DOA.”

8) It’s easy to stand out if you care a lot

Even though there’s so much content out there, it’s easier than ever to be noticed. The algorithms are so good that you get hand delivered to your ideal audience. All the content in the world is a mountain of hay, but the algorithms are incredibly powerful magnets looking for needles 24/7.

Getting a few views but having people really love your stuff isn’t actually a bad thing at all. The algos pick out lots of slop because human desire isn’t actually as pure as we’d like. We’re easily enraged and amused by stuff our higher minds might disapprove of. The thing it, we’re realizing it now, and everyone’s preferences are slowly changing. We love cake even though it’s bad for us, but we’re all realizing that too much cake is hurting us, so now we’re switching up our taste and diet.

People are now more aware of attention as currency, and are giving it to more deserving media each day. Our taste is getting more refined, and the algos cater to taste perfectly, which makes it the best time to make a masterpiece and have it seen by people who’ll care about it.

9) Remind people you exist

With the switch to algorithmic feeds, even if you put something out, you likely gotta put it out a couple times in a couple different ways for people to actually see it, even your followers. Social media rewards the courageous over the intelligent. It might feel a little shameful, but if you truly think what you made is good, why deprive people the chance to see your thing? Surely they’ll prefer what you make over their 95th slop video of the day in the middle of their doomscroll, right?

If you’re struggling to come up with what to post, post freaking anything. Start with what you live in, and the feeds are so smart nowadays that it’ll find it’s way to who it’s meant for. People love feeling like they’ve found a diamond in the rough, and are craving real life so much that they’re actually more intrigued by something that looks unpolished but interesting rather than “content”.

Bonus: 10) inspo/laughs/ponderings

Inspo

Colin and Samir are awesome. I didn’t know it took so long for them to get the attention they deserved. Similarly, for one of my favourite writers, it took him 15 years of writing before anyone wanted to talk to him about his work.

I’m a raptors fan and these posters are fire. Also really cool that people can just post their art on Twitter and get paid for it per impression now. Never a better time to make cool stuff and share it online.

I never consciously thought of these errors as ways to hook someone, I feel like the fish being caught, but cool to know you can use “faults” this way.

Similarly, I’ve seen these types of videos before everywhere, but never thought of them as a “format” where the first frame is meant to invoke a specific emotion.

Laughs

Banger. Funny to think about big brands spending millions to replicate a 16 year old with a Tiktok addiction and no filter.

1. Banger motto for anyone afraid of not being original with what they make.

2. Even the national parks service has a social media specialist now. I bet he’s pretty good.

No way they actually did this. Reminds me of Amazon Boy.

Ponderings

Yes these things are on the up and the brands are going to use them to sell us things. But also further proves the slop uprising, which means there will also be a counter slop uprising. I predict next year anti-brainrot/brain-recover content will be a thing.

I wonder how much of everything I see online is a subtle attempt to sell me something. Even the people who say they’re not selling you anything when they’re small or act authentic change their ways as they grow and need money. You can’t even show your phone anymore without it turning into a marketing opportunity.

There’s this $5 app called Dumbify I’ve been using for the past year. Highly recommend. I try to make my phone as un-addicting as possible which involves:

• hiding all the addicting apps with face id so they don’t show in app library, search or history by default

• muting everyone I don’t care about on Instagram

• muting everyone that remotely annoys me or is hateful on Twitter

• disabling double tap to wake

• black and white mode (though I rarely keep this up because I watch netflix on my phone and forget to turn it back on)

• disabling animations/motion

• disabling notifications from almost every app

• always being on do not disturb, allowlisting only family and close friends

That’s all the slides I saved. Hope you learned something! Email me if you have any thoughts on this or read it yourself, I’d love to chat about it: aadillpickle@gmail.com

I recently turned 23, and this is the first age I literally did not ever picture myself being. At 14 I could see myself at 18 just entering college. At 18 I pictured myself at 21 getting lit. At 19 I pictured myself at 22 graduating college. But literally nothing in my life went according to that plan — at 17 I wasn’t even planning on going to college, at 19 I dropped out, at 21 I was super sober, and at 22 I’d worked in tech for 3 years.

Anyway, sometimes when people age, they think they know more now that they’re older. I have realized, as I’ve aged, that I know nothing at all. I had myself and the world figured out at 16 and it’s been downhill ever since.

So instead of the usual “23 things I’ve learned at 23”, here’s some things I’ve been thinking about recently that my past self would likely be better off knowing.

Literally no one knows what’s best for you

You think you know what’s best for you. You’re pretty sure mom and dad don’t but you still wish they did. You hope that your brother and cousin know what’s best for you, but the truth is it’s impossible to know because there’s no objective criteria to measure against.

This is terrifying and freeing. Terrifying because no decision you ever make is going to be correct in an objective sense. Freeing because no matter what decision you make, you can’t be wrong! People are going to get really upset with you for not listening to them, and you should probably listen to them more, because more input data is never a bad thing. But lots of times there’s going to be no decision that makes everyone happy, so you’ll have to learn to live with that. Democratic discussions, autocratic decisions.

In the end, you’re the one who has to live your life, and has to make most of your decisions. The more decisions you make, the better you get at making them, and it’s much easier to live with a decision you make than one that’s made for you.

Do what’s obvious

You’re going to spend years thinking there’s some silver bullet, some secrets in the universe you can unlock just by thinking hard enough, or searching for it by talking to the right people and just asking the right questions. There’s not.

The most obvious approach is usually correct. If you want to be better at something, work hard on it. If you want to figure out what you’re meant to do, try a bunch of things and do what you like. If you want to be happy, notice when you’re happy and do the things that got you there.

What makes this hard is that obvious doesn’t always mean easy. You’re going to have some really hard conversations along the way, and hurt some people you never meant to hurt. You’re going to feel stuck, lost, and alone. That’s inevitable, and it will suck so much. But the pain of inaction hurts more than the pain on action. The few regrets you have will be related to things you didn’t do, not what you do do. When in doubt, ask her out.

Damn dude give yourself some grace

You’re going to push yourself a lot, then try to relax, then get angry at yourself for not pushing yourself enough. You’re going to try lots of new things and get mad that you’re not as naturally talented at them as everyone else who’s spent 10 years practicing. You’re going to think you’re lazy. A lot, you’re going to think that a lot actually. It’s pretty much going to be your constant fear anytime you take some time off that you’ll slip into being lazy, poor, and disheveled.

Relax. Maybe one of the most important things along the way is learning to breathe. Wim Hof method, circular breathing, 30 seconds to take away all the pain, to center yourself. The ideal version of you in your head isn’t smacking himself with a baseball bat every day because he’s not enough, and if you want to become him, neither should you.

You’re going to think giving yourself grace is going to make you lazy. I promise you, your ambition is core. It doesn’t come from being mean to yourself, it comes from the pure goodness in your soul. Your heart is clear and you genuinely care so much about the people around you and the world, and want to improve yourself so that you can do more good. Plus, every time you do truly relax after becoming sick of everything, you get bored after a while, and realize it’s more fun to try doing and making things than not. Even when you think you need like 3 months, you’re usually back at it within 2 weeks tops.

Friends make life worth it

You’re going to go back and forth between desperately wanting to feel belonging with other people and thinking you don’t need anyone else around because you’re better off alone. You couldn’t be more wrong about the latter. And for the former, you’ll find belonging but only after you achieve a certain amount of self-acceptance. It’ll be offered to you a couple times, but you won’t be able to accept it at first, and you’ll push away lots of people that are just trying to be nice to you. It’s all good — see above section about giving yourself some grace.

You might have moments where you lose yourself trying to care for other people, and you’ll notice that, and withdraw thinking everyone’s better off without you. They’re not, and neither are you. A break is good, spending time alone is good, but reclusion sucks, you’re just not built like that, and you’re actively hurting your friends too because they’ll miss you like you miss them. You can’t find yourself in other people, but it’s almost necessary to find yourself with other people. A father is just a man without his daughter, a President is just a person without a population, a CEO without employees is just someone with a desk. People are nothing significant if not in relation to others.

You might think it’s unproductive to spend time with your friends. You’ll think you need to “work on yourself” to fix all your problems. Most of the progress I’ve made has come from phases when I interacted with the world more. There is no nobility in self-isolation, only stagnation. You’ll learn that solo travel is a cool idea, and that you’re pretty chill by yourself, but travelling with friends is 10x more fun, so it’s usually better trying to convince someone to come with you.

Take every moment to stay up until sunrise talking to someone. Show up early to help set up. Take the flight, rent the car, share a way too tiny scooter together. Give gifts that’ll become remind people of you everyday. Create lore that you’ll talk about in rocking chairs one day. Have people unrelated to you that your kids will call Uncle and Aunty one day.

Comfort is the enemy of learning

Remember how I said you’re going to fear getting lazy? It’s a really valid fear. There’s going to be lots of times where you’re going to be doing above average by most observable metrics, and you’ll envision this life where you’re settled down with a wife, dog, 2.2 kids, car, house, everything. And you’ll be on the path to getting it, everything should be right, and then suddenly you’ll be struck with this painful feeling in your chest. LISTEN TO THAT FEELING. DO SOMETHING ELSE.

You’re not built for traditional comfort. You feel most free in navigating ambiguity, and can handle chaos better than most people. That’s not an excuse to leave your room messy, in fact probably a reason to clean it because there still is an upper limit to your chaos so you might want to minimize all easily reducible chaos. For some reason, you believe you’re capable of a lot, and by the Thielian proverb “whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”, you are capable of a lot.

There’s a reason you read Zero to One when you were 14 — you’re a little insane. Lean into it. Do not confuse your comfort for what most other people think is comfortable. You love learning, and whenever you’re not, you get so uncomfortable. Spend your weeks being a different person at the end than you were at the start. An ideal life for you likely will include an atomic family, but if you conflate that with lounging around all day watching Netflix, you’re likely in for some uncomfy chest feelings. Because the truth is, that feeling comes from not living up to your own values. And whenever you try to shy away from working hard or trying new things, it’s lying to yourself about the type of person you are. And you hate lying.

Appearances matter

Okay, you are not going to care about your appearance for a long time. Nor should you care about it too too much, but it will definitely make your life better being 10% hotter rather than 10% smarter. Anecdotally, good looking people seem to matter more in this world.

It’s not just physical appearance. Design matters. You love well designed software, not just functional but beautiful. You feel noticeably better with soft lighting and floor to ceiling windows than you do in a fluorescent white box. Your appetite fades when the food doesn’t ‘look good’. Make things look good, and things that look good.

Please spend more money on clothes. The free tech swag and sweatpants look is a phase that’ll pass as you engage more with the world outside your bedroom. Don’t listen to other tech dudes they’re all just as clueless. Lululemon and Ultraboosts aren’t the peak of fashion and you’ll feel way more confident when you stop dressing like you’re ready for an 8 hour flight all the time.

Do stuff for no reason

Some of the best stuff in your life will come from writing about every random thought you have on the internet. People will want to be your friends, give you jobs, and even ask you out because of this thing you started doing because you were bored during the pandemic.

I’m not saying don’t have goals or be intentional about stuff. It is cool to try and try hard. But don’t tie yourself to desiring a certain outcome from it. Try with no expectation.

Start things often. No need to finish all of them, but be the type of person who gets struck with ideas and tries to make them happen. If you let ideas pass through your brain often without trying to bring them into the real world, one day they might stop coming. Don’t question the ideas, just be glad they came, and pay respect to the idea by acting on it as often as possible. You have no idea how or if the dots will connect, but having more dots makes prettier pictures possible.

Be curious not judgemental

Again, you’re going to think for the longest time that you have the world figured out. That everything is analyzable and people are like puzzles waiting to be solved, to be “gotten”. The world is complicated and it’s easier to put people and situations into boxes based on your first judgement because to dive deeper would take effort and it’s just easier not too.

Fight that urge. Don’t ask questions and listen with the intention to arrive at an answer, or even assume there is one. You can only ever really know 20% about a person, max. Humans are so complicated that you could spend 8 years with someone and not even remotely understand what goes on in their head, because you’ll never be in their head. You’ll only see them from your perspective, never knowing their intentions or feeling their brain chemicals, in maybe 1% of their overall interactions in the world.

Truly feeling this is incredibly exciting. You’ll write it in permanent marker on your desk just so you can try to internalize it everyday. If you have the energy to dive in, no one is boring anymore. The people around you will feel like you think they’re special and one of a kind. Because you do. Because how could they not be?

Act your age

You are going to be the youngest person in many rooms from here on out. You’re going to keep the beard to make yourself look older, and beam with pride whenever anyone guesses your age as mid-to-late 20s. You’re the youngest, so you’re going to spend all your time wanting to be older, to prove you can take care of yourself and be independent and be taken seriously.

Take yourself less seriously. If people wanted another adult in the room, they would’ve invited one. People like youthful energy, it’s a breath of fresh air. It’ll be hard because you’ll care more about your career and less about school than other people your age. But don’t let that mean you have to care less about enjoying yourself. Use the allowance of being young to make mistakes, to f**k around and find out. No need to put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect all the time. Even as an adult, everyone is winging it. You’re going to become good friends with someone 15 years older than you, who you’ll admire a lot, and even he’ll tell you about how as he’s gotten older, he’s realized he knows nothing at all.

Please do something reckless on purpose. I promise you’ll have enough money for retirement even if you don’t save 70% of your money each paycheque just go on that spontaneous boys trip to Fuji. I know you’re scared, but you’re young, which means you’re basically immortal.

The lack of responsibility and how easy it is to make friends are some of the great parts of being young. It all gets way more complicated later. Use it to try as much stuff as possible so that you may “find yourself”, because if you don’t do it now you will have to do it later. No one ever skips stages of development without having to revisit them at a later date, or having something ugly happen. Take advantage of the neuroplasticity and go learn how to make robots or anything else you’re interested in but scared you might not be good at or be able to turn into a career.

Also, it sucks being independent. It’s good to trust people and to rely on them, rather than just letting everyone rely on you and putting all that pressure on yourself. Realize that the same joy you get from giving to others, others get from giving to you.

TBH I hope my 16 year old self doesn’t just think about these lessons but actually tries to go do something differently. I also know that I wouldn’t’ve listened to me back then so maybe this helps someone else.

Anyway if you liked this one, you’ll like the one I did before, this is kind of a part 2.

And if you’re new here, pls email me at aadillpickle@gmail.com on how you found this. It’s been growing a little bit beyond my mom and 3 friends that read this so it’s kinda scary feeling like my little corner of the internet is a bit bigger now. Don’t be a stranger and help me make it a little smaller pls.

The first thing I can remember actively trying to be good at was League of Legends. I remember losing my first few games and thinking “Damn. I could get obsessed with this.”

I was addicted to that game for 4 years. I played at least a couple hours a day, and watched all the pro players and YouTube guides on how to get better. Obsession. Eventually I found other interests, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever reached the same amount of obsession for anything other than that game.

I’m often jealous of people who found their passion early. People who’ve been dancing since they were 3, who’ve been training for the olympics since they could walk, who have a special connection with music because of their grandma, who started taking apart computers and their parents handed them a Java textbook one day thinking their kid could be ‘good at computers’.

People often say that to find your passion, you should think back to what you did as a kid when you were blindly following your curiosity, unaffected by the world. I honestly can’t remember doing anything other than school and watching TV. I read a lot of books and ate a lot of food. Does that mean my destiny is to become a writer or a chef? Those things kind of just happened— I didn’t choose them. Nor did I put an inordinate amount of effort into either to the point of becoming top 10% in the world.

The second thing I remember devoting a lot of effort to was coding. I started 10 years ago, taught myself Python, learned about AI before it was cool, then worked as a software engineer for a few years before realizing that I probably have a lower skill ceiling than most other software engineers since I’m pretty reluctant to stare at a screen all day. I like talking to people and going outside, but programming inherently rewards those who are more introverted than me.

With that realization, I tried some other stuff. I watched a lot of YouTube so I tried making videos for a while. It was fun but super hard, and after a while, I gave it up because I missed living in San Francisco and having money. Then, backed by the experience of running an e-commerce business in high school, I landed a job at a GPU cloud startup as a growth engineer. After about a year of doing that, I had to opportunity to switch to tech sales. After 2 quarters of doing well at that by most metrics, I got laid off.

From everything I’ve done, professionally and for fun, nothing has screamed out at me as “the thing”. The elusive “thing” that I’m supposed to do with my life. My god-given purpose on this earth.

I have no idea what it is.

I’ve been thinking about the Japanese concept ‘Ikigai’ recently:

It describes so much of what I’m looking for. My last job felt like what I was good at, and what I could be paid for. But my Ikigai will likely come as a marriage of the skills I have and the values instilled in me early in life. I grew up religious, and doing good for the world was a huge part of my upbringing. I feel like I’ve ignored that in my career so far since it felt like the smartest people to learn from or the companies paying the most money are working on cutting edge tech for mostly capitalistic incentives. Even today, I have friends that say what problem you work on doesn’t really matter early in your career. Just optimize for optionality, learning, and money.

I also find it hard to care about large scale problems. Of course I know climate change is terrible, yet I just don’t feel it emotionally. I find it hard to work on something so massive I can’t hold it in my brain. I love working with people where I can directly see their day get better after they interact with me or something I’ve made. Especially if it ties to a broader goal that’s good for the world. Earlier in my career, mission wasn’t as important because I could just convince myself that whatever I was working on was important for the world in some way. Now I just can’t force myself to believe in distributed database software making the world a better place.

I’m not sure about my relationship with art. I really like making things, and believe I’m a creative person, but I’ve never really been amazing at making things look or sound good. I really love being around other creative people but I likely wouldn’t fit in with a group of people who call themselves artists. I’m more like a maker of things, doer of shenanigans, committer to bits. Making a career out of that was what I attempted when I made funny Youtube videos for a summer, and that desire is still in me. To do stuff that barely anyone does and document it so anyone watching feels like they can do more than they thought they could.

That’s one of my favourite feelings in general— to make someone feel like they can do more than they think they can. It’s something I’ve been lucky enough to have from multiple friends and mentor figures in the past, and I want to instil it in others. Which is why I think part of what I do next needs to have me in a role with a lot of ownership, and the eventual ability to teach others. I’d love to lead a team and think I’d be good at it, after getting over the initial learning curve of coordinating people. I just know much more is possible with others than alone. So learning to be a force multiplier on a group of people is really important to me.

I also think the most effective leaders are those who, if it came down to it, could do any of their team’s individual roles better than them. It’s near impossible to command respect as a general if people feel like you’re just a figurehead rather than an expert soldier. Which is why the best engineering managers are former engineers, yet not all top engineers are good managers. So whatever I do next, it’ll involve me spending lots of time in the trenches doing work that actually drives output to develop tangible skills. And therefore needs to have a high baseline difficulty so I can add some nice grooves to my brain. I want to actually do stuff, not just live vicariously through “enabling” the people doing the stuff.

Now that I’m unemployed, the most common question I get is “What are you going to do next?” For a week, the answer was: “Nothing.” I wanted so badly to jump into solving all the problems that came up when my job ended, but I promised myself I’d defer any decisions to at least next week. I spent that week trying to get my head right, taking long walks and spending lots of time in saunas and hot tubs.

The conclusion I came to was that I love America. I feel like there’s something here for me, and so I should get a job ASAP so I can have a work visa that lets me stay here long term. I interviewed with 20 or so companies, did a 2-week unofficial trial with one I really liked, and kept a bunch of promising options on the back-burner in case the trial didn’t work out.

Everything was going well until 1 week into the trial I had a full day where I just froze. I couldn’t get any work done, and I was also so mentally stuck that I didn’t give my boss a heads up. We talked about it after and 2 days later I told him I couldn’t do it. I really liked the job, my coworkers were awesome, and the mission was something I’d always wanted to work on. The timing just wasn’t right. I put a lot of mental and emotional effort into my work, and at the time, I wasn’t in the place to put 100% of my energy into something. My entire body was telling me that this wasn’t it, even though my brain said it was.

I shoehorned it into Ikigai, thinking that it fit all 4 criteria, but the feeling in my bones said otherwise. Considering the alternative, that I don’t know what I’m doing or what I want, was too terrifying. I wanted the answer so badly that I convinced myself and everyone around me that this was “the thing”. It had to be.

Maybe the other part unmentioned part of Ikigai is timing. Something could be put in front of me that fits all 4 criteria, but if I’m not ready to receive, it’ll never feel like a fit.

Thinking back to League of Legends, whenever I felt stuck in the game, I started “smurfing” — I made a new account on the side where I could play against easier competition and not take the game too seriously.

I ended up getting a higher rank on my smurf than my main.

I have this habit of getting into something far past the point of being a beginner, but then getting way too in my head when I start feeling legitimately challenged.

I spent 2 years writing on Substack to an audience of pretty much no one. Now that I’ve gotten recognized a couple times for my writing, it feels like no piece I write is good enough to publish. I have more drafts than posts at this point, and so to get out of my own head, I made a private blog where I write about whatever comes to mind to a few close friends every week. My private now has more posts than my main (and I think they’re pretty good too!)

I tweet less now that I have an audience. I said I’d make videos but get self-conscious when people tell me they watched them, even though the feedback is always positive. Some part of me is just more comfortable hidden away in the quiet of my childhood bedroom tinkering away at my desk in obscurity than being observed by anyone. Yet at the same time, making things and telling people on the internet about them has given me more than I ever dreamt of. It’s something I will happily continue doing, I just need to get out of my own head.

I need to start smurfing again.

So like Steve Jobs, it seems like every cool person in western history did 2 things:

1. Die young

2. Go on a journey to find themself in Asia

Who am I to argue with the greats? That’s why I booked a one-way flight to Shenzhen yesterday. I leave in 2 weeks, and have no idea when or how I’m coming back to San Francisco. I’m just going to be away for as long as I want, going wherever I want, until I’m ready to come back, or until I run out of money.

The plan is to see what I naturally end up doing when I have none of my existing influences pushing me in any direction. I love SF to death, but it’s a terrible place to be if you don’t know what you’re doing. The culture I’m a part of here seems to march in 1 direction only and promises to carry those who indulge it to power, wealth and influence I’m 90% sure I’ll find my way back here since some part of me wants those things, but more so because I love the friends I have here.

So if I’m meant to be a lazy bum for some time, or to write sappy love letters and blog posts all day, or to start importing Japanese shoes and Chinese electronics to the West, I’d like the find out. I’m not going away to look for something. I’m going away to open up the possibility of something finding me, and this trip is just widening my search space. I’m ready for active exploration — the point is to do something each day, but I have no preconceived ideas about what each day should look like. I’m not going to explicitly work or play or relax or anything — I’m just going to try out a new way of being and see if it’s for me.

In the back of my mind, I’m thinking about making videos again talking about whatever I want, unburdened by what I’ve put out before and my existing audience, just to get into the rhythm of making stuff and telling people about it again. But again, this is a soft plan. Not sure if I’ll follow through.

It may seem like I’m doing this to run away from my problems. It may seem like I’m searching for something. The truth is, it’s probably a little bit of both but also I’m really also just doing this because I genuinely don’t know what to do.

I feel like a reason for being is something you almost can’t search for. Borrowing from ideas in Daoism, it’s something you know when you have it but have no idea what it looks or feels like until you do. And I think what’s meant for me is coming for me no matter where I go, I can’t outrun it. Borrowing from Steve Jobs, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

I’m just praying this all connects at some point.

I’m a big fan of the phrase “do it scared”. And I am pretty terrified here, even though I know rationally there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m scared all get lazy, become broke and unattractive, or all my friends will forget me while I’m gone. I’m scared of getting irrationally arrested in China, or dying in a Tsunami in Japan. I’m scared of being unemployable, or never being able to come back.

But more than all of that, I’m scared of what’ll happen if I stay. I can feel my mind slowly slipping, slowly atrophying as I spend more time in the same place without leaning into the potential inflection point granted to me. I’m afraid if I don’t chase something right now, I’ll lose the ability to. If I settle into another job that’s not quite right for me, into one city for the rest of my 20s without really experiencing any other culture, into a domestic lifestyle without really wanting it because that’s what all my friends are doing — I’ll never really know what I want.

The way I see it, there’s pain on both sides. Might as well get hurt trying something new.

Thank you to Kasra, Grace, Jacky and Brinlee for reviewing this. And to all my aforementioned wonderful friends who’ve listened to me talk about all the crazy shit in my head through this transition period. Hope you know that I’m probably going to keep going through ups and downs like this, and that I appreciate you a lot for bearing with me.

I’m at a weird place with this Substack where I started out writing on it for an audience of my mom and a couple of friends, and now there’s hundreds of you reading this that I don’t even know. It’s been part journal, part newsletter, part blog and part captain’s log.

I want to get even more personal on here, and write more than I ever have before. I don’t want to give advice, just talk about what I’m doing and going through in the hopes that someone out there might benefit from it. I want to be known well by

But I want everyone reading this to feel less like an audience. I kind of hate that term for stuff like this — I want to write the same way I do for my mom and a couple friends as I do for you all reading this that I don’t know, the friends I haven’t met yet. So if you made it all the way here, I need 2 favours from you.

1. Introduce yourself! Say hi to me either here over email: aadillpickle@gmail.com or twitter @aadillpickle. Bonus if you tell me what I should write more about.

2. Send this to 1 friend you think could learn from what I’m talking about here, or someone going through something similar to make them feel less alone. No pressure, but I write for people like me, and I know there’s gotta be a lot out there, so I’d like to meet them, even if its just virtually and parasocially. Better than being just another of the 8 billion strangers out there.

Thank you so much for reading. 🫵🙏✌️