October 15, 2022 | Read Online

Bullshit

And other lessons gleaned from The Lone Star State.

Cole Schafer
October 15, 2022

Real quick...

While this newsletter is free to read, it sure as hell isn't free to run. If you want to support the cause in some small way, journey down south to the bottom of this page and take a look at the many goodies I've made just for you. Or, just buy me a Moscow Mule.

Now for the meat and potatoes...

My great-grandmama said that one day my teenage uncle walked into the closet-sized kitchen of her little shotgun home in Francisco, Indiana and told her that he was leaving for Texas.

Thinking him full of shit, she laughed, gave him a big hug and told him to take good care of himself. That afternoon he jumped on a boxcar headed West to The Lone Star State and she didn't see him again for another five years.

I don't know what it is about men lacing up their boots and heading West when they've got shit to figure out. But, something about riding in the direction of the falling sun is a romantic, if not a primal step in sorting out one's life.

I've gone out West three times in my life and each time, that side of the United States has dealt me a much-needed ass-kicking that's sent me cussing all the way back home to Indiana.

My first trip out West was to California.

I was fresh out of college and as lost as a pair of misplaced car keys. I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life and to kill time I'd hole up in a Starbucks in West Hollywood and write. It took me a little while to realize that whatever you do to kill time might be worth doing for the rest of your life. I left California knowing I wanted to be a writer. I just didn't yet know how.

My next trip out West was to Colorado.

I was looking for love and I found it (and later wrote a book about it). Isn't half of falling in love wanting to? The love wasn't so much love but lust. It was cheap and plastic and like all cheap, plastic things it was awful pretty to look at when it was brand new, but it quickly lost its sheen and, ultimately, didn't possess the legs to last a lifetime, let alone a year. I left Colorado brokenhearted but very much aware of what love wasn't.

My last trip out West was to Texas.

I'm currently on that trip as I type this now so I can't pretend to possess the lessons it will inevitably deal me. What I will say, is that there are certain places you go in your life where you feel you've belonged all along. Texas is one of these places.

I'm as at home here as I am anywhere. Something about the state –– be it its vastness, strangeness or wildness –– grabs me by the shirt collar and demands my attention like a good book.

Mineola and Austin are two of my favorite places in Texas yet they're about as similar to one another as dust and water.

I spent the beginning of my week weathering a nasty cold in a neighboring town to Mineola called Golden, holed up in my girl's little pink home that sits on 47 acres of East Texas countryside.

There's no AC, TV or WIFI and it's about a 20-minute drive away from anything that looks remotely like entertainment.

In the mornings, I'd sit out on the patio and pluck away at an old Martin decorated with a fist-sized hole in its chest and no E-string and just hack up a lung.

As I'd pluck, I'd look out at the dry landscape and I'd feel as content as I ever have felt doing anything, anywhere.

After about three days in East Texas and a Z-pack that nuked whatever was waging war inside my chest, Kace and I jumped on a plane and high-tailed it to Austin where I found myself thrust out of this simpler way of existing and into the busy, bustling, ambitious land of tech, innovation and wealth.

Like Chicago, London and New York City, Austin possesses a feeling of invincibility and possibility that's as addictive as crack cocaine and, if left unchecked, as destructive too.

Recharged after Golden and feeling healthier than ever before, I found myself, once again, wanting the whole goddamn world or nothing at all... an ailment I've suffered from for as long as I can remember.

What was different this time around, though, was that as I felt this ambition well up inside of my chest and run away with my mind, I thought hard about its costs.

To be ambitious is to always want more and to always want more is to be forever unsatisfied and to be forever unsatisfied is to be unhappy.

It's impossible to be wildly ambitious and totally happy at the same time because if you were totally happy, you wouldn't have the ambition to change your current situation or state of being.

In this way, ambition is postponing happiness –– or at least a degree of happiness –– until you reach a desired outcome.

We literally pay for our ambition with happiness. So, it's important that we find something truly worthy of our ambition and, perhaps, not have too many ambitions at one time.

Anybody reading this newsletter is ambitious.

And, telling you to stop being ambitious would be like telling a hunting dog to spend the rest of its life curled up in the foyer beside a fire.

You would grow restless, stressed and bored.

You were born to hunt so you must hunt but you must find something that's worth the hunt... that's worth the long days and long nights... that's worth the uncertainty... that's worth the inevitable failures... that's worth the unhappiness.

And even then, you must maintain a healthy perspective with it all. You must possess the ability to balance the two: your happiness and your ambition.

I recall shaking Willie Nelson's hand once.

He was tucked away in the booth of his camper playing dominoes with one of his sons.

His wife and his other son were towards the front of the camper showering the newest member of the family with love, a two-month-old puppy whose name escapes me.

30-minutes later, Willie took the stage with Kace at the ripe old age of 89-years-old, strumming away at his legendary guitar Trigger.

Together they sang, "On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again, the life I love is making music with my friends ––"

As you work to strike this balance between ambition and happiness, make a list of the things that matter to you:

"Share a moment with the woman I love every day"
"Make a family to play dominos with"
"Cherish each and every cup of coffee"
"Remember to pray"
"Do work I'm proud of"
"Reach for a book over a screen"
"Take good care of my body and mind"
"Make enough money not to worry about money"

Fold that list up, stick it in your wallet and look at it every day.

And when you find yourself feeling a bit lost and unsure of what you should do next, follow in the footsteps of my uncle...

Jump on the next boxcar to Texas.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. If you're new to Sticky Notes, you can subscribe here.

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That big, beautiful white beast to the right of the photograph is a breed of cow called a Brahman. He was brought into the herd to mate with seventeen female cows that he guards like a greedy king.

Much to the Brahman's disdain, Kace and I fed his herd 'cow pellets'. While he was mostly well-behaved, he would assert his dominance by lowering his head, whipping his tail and scraping a pair of front hooves the size of dinner plates against the soil.

After being so close to an animal of that size, I can't believe there are men who take up professions as matadors.

Fortunately, I'm a writer that makes his living with words. If you want to support me being a writer, you can purchase one of the following products...

My copywriting course
My cold email course
My books (One Minute, Please?, After Her or Guillotine)
My brass coins

Or, just buy me a Moscow Mule.

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