Sticky Notes - I can't believe I'm saying this.

I woke up early this morning next to my girl. She coaxed me into staying in bed with her a little bit longer than usual –– until about 9:30 a.m. –– because I had turned twenty-eight-years-old while I was asleep the night before.

After an hour or so of nuzzling and dozing in and out of sleep, I climbed out of bed. I brushed my teeth. I took a piss. I pulled on my clothes. I slipped into my boots. And, I packed up my stout burlap duffle bag that carries me from my place to her's and back again in the evenings that we share together.

As she was seeing me out, she asked me if I had anything special planned for the day (save for dinner with her, that evening, at one of our favorite Eastside spots).

I gave her a hug and a kiss and I said, "No. Not really. Just writing."

When your birthday falls five days after the new year, it's impossible not to find yourself in deep reflection. I've always taken my birthday seriously. Not in a celebratory sense. I'm not the type that wants to get a bunch of friends together to watch as I blow out candles.

But, I do take life seriously and I do view life as a luxury and I do feel that the very least I can do to show a sense of gratitude to God or the universe or whoever or whatever created me, is to take a moment once a year to pause. 

Because I'm a writer, much of this pausing takes place on the page; the page you're reading now. 

I think it's a bit cliche when folks write out a bunch of life lessons on their birthday, conveniently matching the number of lessons with the number of years they've spent on this Earth. But, I do appreciate the novelty and simplicity of a good, clean list. It makes a beautifully complicated thing like life feel more approachable, more digestible. 

So, while I'm not going to number them, I am going to share some ideas, questions, thoughts and broodings swimming about my mind this afternoon in the midst of all this reflection.

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If you tackle something ambitious each and every month, by the end of the year you will have been ambitious on a dozen separate occasions... My only goal for 2022 is to do something ambitious each month. For January, I'm releasing 31 spoken word poems (one per day) over on TikTok. While I highly doubt I will gain much notoriety for this, by the end of the month I will have a neat creative project I can't point to. 

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You can be a mostly happy person while at the same time having moments of deep, inexplicable melancholy. Or, at least this is the story I'm telling myself.

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I've found that melancholy (and/or sadness) is stunted through gratitude or exercise. It's damn difficult to be grateful and sad at the same time. And, while you can certainly be sad while you exercise, exercise allows you to get out of your head and into your body; and it gifts you reprieve from thinking about the sadness, at least for a little while.  

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It's hard to do something rash after a good, long walk.

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The further you get into a romantic relationship, the harder it becomes to keep the romance alive because somewhere along the way you forget to hold her hand or graze her leg or reach over and kiss her on her cheek or run your fingers through her hair. But, if you can make these small gestures a daily practice, they will no longer become a practice and, instead, an almost subconscious way in which you express love to your significant other. 

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Romance isn't the candlelit dinner. Romance is holding her hand.

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If you aren't receiving the applause you think your work deserves, don't be discouraged –– you could just be creating for a taste that doesn't exist yet.

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If you wouldn't do it if nobody was watching, don't do it.

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As you approach the same age as your parents when they had you, you gain great empathy for them, realizing that like you, they were just kids trying to figure it all out along the way.

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While it's certainly fashionable to paint your parents as monsters, especially in this day in age, I can't and I'm grateful for that; I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

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You don't forgive for others. You forgive for yourself. 

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Half of falling in love is wanting to; half of falling in love is choosing to. 

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Making love last is refusing to jump ship when you see the waterfall raging on the horizon. 

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I blame cancel culture entirely on Nintendo 64, for making it so goddamn easy to "rage quit" when things weren't going your way.

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You can't rage quit life. So, lean in.  

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Make the world a place you will miss when you're gone.

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If you can condition yourself to get a sick pleasure out of misery and suffering, your ability to weather misery and suffering will increase by tenfold. You do this by intentionally placing misery and suffering in your life in a safe and productive way: running five miles, sitting in a piping-hot sauna, fasting, moving heavy weights, etc.

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Advertising is for the pocketbook. Poetry is for the soul.

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To totally enjoy the party, you have to know when it's time to leave the party. 

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Fuck, I should have bought Bitcoin. 

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Don't apologize for your emotions. Apologize for being an asshole for your emotions. 

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If you find yourself refreshing your feed more than once, it's probably a good indicator that it's time to log off.

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I've got to stop reading so many books at once. 

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Cursing in your writing was edgy two years ago, now it's becoming overplayed. 

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"Damn..."

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Lastly, birthday or not, you should spend your day how you would spend your last day.

When my girl asked me earlier this morning if I had anything special planned for the day, I would have still gotten at the same thing but I would have rephrased my response slightly. 

Let's go back to the beginning.

As she was seeing me out, she asked me if I had anything special planned for the day (save for dinner with her, that evening, at one of our favorite Eastside spots).

I gave her a hug and a kiss and I said, "Yes. I do. I'm going to spend the day writing and then I'm going to have dinner with you..."

Find a craft worth dying for. Find a person worth dying for. And then, live each and every day being wildly thankful for both. 

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. There's more. There's always more. Keep scrolling. 

Down below you will find six products that I sell over at Honey Copy. If you care about me... if you love me... if you're thankful I'm still alive... you will buy one of these products. It's as simple as that.

* Snow Cones... will help you not write shit. 

* $100k... will help you make more dough. 

* Don Draper... will help you get more responses. 

* One Minute, Please?... will make you feel something. 

* After Her... will make you cry.

* Chasing Hemingway... will make you love email again.

Oh, and real quick, before you keep scrolling, let's talk about cake vs. pie.

For over a century now, a heated debate has been raging between cake lovers and pie buffs regarding the popularity and superbness of the two desserts.

(Keep up with me here because I'm about to debunk this argument in a few short paragraphs...)

Back in 2019, cakes dominated 82.6% of the cake and pie category in United States grocery stores. So, cake without a doubt takes the cake if we're strictly speaking in terms of popularity.

Now, if we're debating who is "better", I would argue it's not a discussion of who is "better" but a discussion of who is more "versatile".

In regards to cake, there's butter cake, pound cake, ice cream cake, sponge cake (which tastes like a fart smells), angel food cake (also terrible), genoise cake, biscuit cake, chiffon cake, baked (and unbaked) flourless cake, carrot cake, red velvet cake, sheet cake, etc.

These are all different genres of cake, each of which can take on a wide array of unique flavors.

Pie, on the other hand, only enjoys three genres.

There is 1). sweet pies (cherry, pecan, apple, etc) and 2). savory pies (chicken pot pie, Irish potato pie, vegetable ricotta pie, etc) and 3). cheesecake (which is considered a pie and not a cake due to its size, stature and crust).

Some argue that cheesecake is neither a cake nor a pie because it has no outer crust. I think this argument is preposterous. Nobody in their right mind would ever argue that pecan pie isn't a pie, yet it sports only a bottom layer of crust. 

Anyway, all that being said, since cake dominates sales across the United States and because it sports dozens of genres compared to pie's three, cake wins the cake vs. pie debate outright, no questions asked. 

With that said, I'm more of a pie person myself. Unless, of course, we're talking Olive Oil Cake. I love Olive Oil Cake.  

"Schafer, whose writing is littered with spiritual undertones, ponders if organized religion's hatred and banishment of vices and guilty pleasures could mean most of the interesting (and flawed) individuals who once walked the Earth are now having coffee in hell..."

I wrote this piece two and half years ago at the age of twenty-five. Reading it now, I see an insecure kid with a lot of raw talent that had some things right but a lot of things wrong.

This is the importance in writing things down; your writings become a perfectly functional time machine.

* past Cole is typing now *

I'm eight beers in. It's 11:47 p.m. I'm seated in a rickety lawn chair on a beach in Florida. There's not a moon anywhere in sight.

Its absence is making the dark, darker. It's there, just hidden behind clouds sitting like silent giants in the sky, moving slowly across what little I can see of the horizon.

Every so often, a break will appear, the clouds will part like the ocean revealing a black canvas decorated with sparkling stars. These stars will sit still for a good while until one decides it has had enough. It will break loose and shoot across the universe like one of Apollo's arrows. This happens four times, each time I don't know what to wish for.

Far off to my left, there is a thunderstorm. It's wicked. It's wild. It's wonderful. I watch it for an hour. Each bolt of lightning sets fire behind more clouds. It looks like angels are fucking behind a candlelit curtain.

If I've learned anything in my twenty-five years on Earth, it's that you can't force reflection. You can practice being more present and thoughtful on a day to day basis, but great reflection seems to come in moments like these when God or the universe sits your ass in a shitty little chair, with enough beer to drown a pirate and says...watch as I put on a show.

Last night, I did a great deal of thinking and reflecting on both myself, my writing and my journey in building Honey Copy. And, this morning, I wanted to share some of these reflections with you.

For the past three years, I've been sprinting.

After finding myself in a crummy job at an advertising agency in my hometown back in 2016, I decided to "follow my dreams".

One day after resisting the urge to smash my forehead against the exposed brick wall in front of my desk, I walked out of the office at 2 p.m. and returned the next day at 8 a.m. to put in my two weeks.

It took me a little over a year, working an odd construction job by day and writing by night until I began making a full-time living with my pen.

Today, as I write this, I still have trouble wrapping my head around my life and my work.

Three years ago, I was making $15/ hour tearing out dilapidated carpet in sweltering hot apartment buildings that reeked of cat piss and today I'm making six-figures slinging ink for some of the coolest brands in the world.

While much of my success comes down to luck, as I spent some time reflecting last night, I realized a few other things that certainly haven't hurt. I'm sharing them in part to pat my ego, in part because I think they might be helpful in your journey, too...

P.P.P.S. Once again, if something I ever write resonates with you, please share it via the icons down below and encourage others to subscribe here.