Sticky Notes - Something... new.

*ATTENTION* 

Here in the next week or so, I will be launching something entirely new. I'm intentionally keeping it vague for the time being because, like I said, it's new. But, if you're a freelancer, side-hustler or solopreneur, my hope is to help you raise a whole lot of hell in the wild wild west that is the internet. If you'd like to get notified once this shit is live, give me a shout here. 

NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT MOMENTUM...

I tasted momentum for the very first time when I was eight years old.

My younger brother and I were jumping around like a pair of jackrabbits, playing some sort of game we had made up.

I don't know if he bobbed when I weaved or if he leaped when I ducked but his skull crashed into my mouth like a battering ram.

At the time, I wore a retainer to fix a gap in my two front teeth wide enough to hug a pair of pennies and the momentum of his head turned the wires on my retainer into a guillotine that butchered my gums to ground beef.

My mother found me in the bathroom spitting up blood by the mouthful, rushed me to the hospital and I recall spending the next month on a liquid diet, praying I'd hang on to all my pearly whites.

Fortunately, I managed to hang onto all 32. 

Momentum can be lethal and unforgiving. It can turn a retainer into a clever. It can turn a Prius into a battering ram. Enough of it, behind a single, small piece of aerodynamic metal can take a child's life. 

But, momentum can also be healing and life-giving, too. It can be the hand that saves the child struggling to swim. It can be the ambulance that rushes somebody's grandmother to the hospital, just in time. Enough of it, in the form of an electrical charge, can make a dead man's heart beat again.

Death is momentum. Life is momentum. Evil is momentum. Good is momentum. Everything is momentum. 

A Monarch butterfly is momentum. 

Every year, Monarchs do something extraordinary: they fly 2,500 miles from Canada down to Central Mexico in a single season.

Somehow, they manage to cross this vast sea of land with a pair of paper-thin wings no thicker than a couple sheets of toilet paper –– how? 

Because while momentum can be colossal and powerful and Godlike and awing and, at times, devastating –– like a fighter jet piercing through the sound barrier or an asteroid falling through the sky or a train ripping from its tracks or a Boxer's fist driving into his opponent's face –– momentum can also be the compounding effect of small, delicate gestures carried out over and over again. 

In this way, momentum is a Monarch butterflies wings –– so orange and so amber and so beautiful and so gentle –– beating on. 

And so the Monarch butterfly and the laws of momentum teach us that we can change our lives, that we can master our crafts, that we can overcome our internal demons, that we can save the world through by having the grace to be gentle once and the resilience to continue being gentle, again and again, even when we have every reason not to be. 

Cheers, 

Cole

P.S. If you like longer, meandering pieces like the one you just read, you should consider checking out Chasing Hemingway. 

Growing up, I went to Hebron Elementary school where every Wednesday I'd look forward to popcorn day.

On Popcorn Day, if you showed up with a quarter, you could get yourself a big bag of greasy popcorn to munch on during recess.

Being the clever marketers that they were, The PTA moms would stamp a green pair of "frog eyes" on the bottoms of every ten or so popcorn bags we could turn in for a prize!

This would cause me and my classmates to buy two, three and four bags of popcorn to increase our chances to wind up with a pair of frog eyes. 

I don't really know where any of this is going but typing this now, I'm realizing that I've kind of been chasing the next pair of "frog eyes" my entire life; always looking for the next best thing, the next big prize.

Like those PTA moms, I'm also a marketer trying to get you to buy more of my shit from me. But, truth be told, you don't need any of it and none of it will make you any less miserable. 

However, if you appreciate what I do and want to say thanks for the hours I pour into this weekly newsletter, you can buy me a drink or pick up one of these goodies down below...

* A guide about writing better copy

* A guide about building a freelance business

* A guide about getting what you want with cold email

* A class about becoming a writer

* A book of prose about life

* A book of poetry about love

* A book of short stories about death

* A memento about facing your fears

* A newsletter about writing and life

Or, again, just buy me a damn drink... 

Most of marketing and advertising is hoopla and horse shit.

And, if anyone in the business ever tries to tell you anything different, then I’d stick my bare ass in a piranha pond before ever considering cutting them a check. 

The internet –– especially LinkedIn and Twitter –– is filled with marketers, advertisers, copywriters, designers and growth hackers that are handsomely rewarded for pretending to have all the answers you’re looking for.

But bad things happen when we follow “gurus”.

There was once a spiritual guru by the name of Yogi Bhajan who a lot of folks believed had all the answers… until it got out that his pupils were kneeling before him in more ways than one. 

And, don’t get me started on the religious guru Jim Jones who made “don’t drink the kool-aid” a household idiom after he laced a fruit drink with cyanide and murdered 900 of his most devoted followers.

No, marketers and admen aren’t nearly as devious as Yogi and Jimmy but I’d argue they’re...

The writers that ultimately fail, falsely assume the world owes them something: a readership, a living, a degree of notoriety, etc.

As a writer who, starting out, had to scratch and claw his way onto the page –– who had to punch countless shifts working manual labor, who had to move back in with his parents for a time after college, who had to eat a whole lot of shitty, low-paying writing gigs for a while –– I can assure you this vocation doesn’t owe you, me or anyone anything.

Working as a writer is no more holy than working as a plumber or a dishwasher or a line cook.

You’ve got to show up. You’ve got to clock-in. You’ve got to work your ass off. And, at the end of your shift, you’ve got to have something of value to show.

If the plumber doesn’t unfuck the com...