Sticky Notes - Why did they ban Jesus from the NBA?

The trick to getting cold brew out of clothing, quickly, is diluting the stain while it is still wet with water and then letting the stain air dry.

Otherwise, you'll walk around with a dark, shit-colored stain on your lap for the remainder of the day until you've had the chance to throw your pants in the wash. 

This morning, while attempting to squeeze my six-foot-two frame between a 6-inch gap separating a desk and a chair, whilst juggling a laptop and a cup of cold brew, I suffered this particular travesty. 

I was then forced to feverishly rub an ice cube, back and forth, across the stain, which from the back I imagine gave the onlooker the impression that I was doing something rather unsatisfactory in public.

Life is funny in that the moment you start taking yourself and your work too seriously, the moment you think you've got it all figured out, it'll leave you looking like a jackass with a fetish for ice cubes. 

The French have a saying to relieve themselves in these moments of jackassery.

My mother, who was born somewhere in Canada's French-speaking province of Québec, said it to me years ago, I can't remember when or where... 

"C'est la vie"

It means "such is life".

It's beautiful, really. It's an undaunted, detached shrug to misfortune. It's a "fuck you" to Lady Luck for turning her back on you. It's radical acceptance. It's nonchalance after having been trounced. 

"C'est la vie"

The lawn care crew (with their mowers so large they'd give the Grim Reaper a hard-on) shows up to cut your neighbor's lawn in the midst of your most important Zoom Call of the week...

"C'est la vie"

The book you spent a whole goddamn year of your life writing releases to a sea of illiterate crickets. 

"C'est la vie"

A bunch of Redditors tear you apart with their fat fingers and then stuff the pieces they've torn in your open, flabbergasted mouth.

"C'est la vie"

Your bald spot in the back of your head is compounding in circumference and your widow's peak is receding as if someone is holding a flame to your third eye. 

"C'est la vie"

You bound down the basketball court your senior year of high school, good enough to finally win that scholarship you've been working for since you were ten years old, you step down wrong, destroy the arch in your left foot and... no more hoop dreams.  

"C'est la vie"

You walk into a coffee shop on a Saturday morning with so much ambition you're practically shooting bolts of electricity out of your fingertips and then you fumble your cold brew into your lap. 

"C'est la vie"

And, here's the thing: you don't say "C'est la vie" because you don't care, you say it because you care so much that if you allow every twist and turn and kick-in-the-nuts to get you down, you'll never make it long enough for life to show you her good side. 

You say "C'est la vie" because the fucked-up Zoom call leads to you rescheduling and the rescheduling leads to you catching the CEO in a better mood, perhaps right after their significant other gave them the best head of their twenty-year-long marriage. 

You say "C'est la vie" because not giving up on writing after your last book flopped harder than your chubby adolescent self trying to make the high dive your bitch, might allow you to one day write the book that makes waves, instead. 

You say "C'est la vie" because somewhere in an alternate universe you're some great ruler that has the power to make all the Redditors who've ever talked shit behind a glowing screen live out their awful, miserable little existences eating platefuls and platefuls of shit of every kind: bat shit, horse shit, dog shit, cat shit, rat shit, cow shit, elephant shit, camel shit, moose shit, tiger shit, lion shit, bear shit, shit, shit, shit. 

You say "C'est la vie" because even though you're losing the hair atop your head as if angels are up there hosing your scalp down with Round-up, they're doing some replanting along the sides of your face and chin and neck. 

You say "C'est la vie" because you destroying your foot and losing that scholarship allowed you to find writing which pays about a dozen of those scholarships out to you every single year. 

You say "C'est la vie" because you pouring coffee down your pants like the asshat you are, gives you the piece you're writing now; the piece you're reading now. 

You say "C'est la vie" because your momma said it when her daddy was being a sonofabitch, because your daddy said it when he left the high-salaried job he hated for a job he was passionate about to show his kids there is more to life than money, because your grandmama said it when she moved from Japan and was missing the hell out of her family back home, because your granddaddy said it when he had to bury the love of his life in the previous sentence. 

You say "C'est la vie" because somedays that's all you can say.

C'est la vie.

Cole Schafer.

P.S. Because he possessed way too much God-given talent. 

P.P.S. If this newsletter made you weak in the knees, give me some love over on Twitter, Linkedin or Instagram.

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One of these days I'm going to make millions opening a church supply company called "Holy Shit". Until then, I'll have to pay the bills selling the following... 

* Freelancing your way to $100k * 

This is a course unpacking how I built Honey Copy into a one-person six-figure freelance business. 

* How to become the Don Draper of cold email *

This is a course that teaches you how to use the dark magic of cold email to get anything you want.

* How to write words that sell like a... * 

This is a course about how to write words that sell like a Florida Snow Cone Vendor on the hottest day of the year.

* Chasing Hemingway *

This is a weekly newsletter (where I basically gossip about myself) that goes out to a couple hundred people.

* One Minute, Please? *

This is a book of short stories, musings and poetry about life, love, creativity and finding purpose.

* After Her *

This is a book about falling in love and about piecing oneself back together again after falling out.

* Let the tigers through the door *

This is a newly minted brass coin that serves as a reminder to stop being such a pansy.
 

There are four ways we can become invaluable and, in turn, indispensable to those around us. We can focus on being one (or many) of the following…

1. Connectors

2. Creators

3. Curators

4. Collaborators

Let's take a moment and explore each of these below. 

Connectors are individuals that connect talent with other talent. They are the person in your town or city or community that always “knowns a guy”.

They make the connections and, sometimes, they take a small cut of the deal.

To become a connector, it normally takes a handful of years to build up an extensive enough Rolodex to effectively connect talented folks with other talented folks.

Creators are individuals that produce their own creative work on a regular basis: be it through writing, designing, coding or building businesses.

They’re essentially creating things from scratch and doing this creating so well that people are willing to pay them for what they create.

Creators can make great livings and garner huge followings...
 

This past Saturday, I realized that nothing I will ever do will make everybody happy and this sudden realization, in a strange way, was liberating.

Two weeks ago, I released The Vending Project: a vending machine filled with books free for the taking.

It took both myself and my partner-in-crime, JP Jackson, countless hours of time to put the project together and it cost me $1,000+ in books, supplies and materials.

While the first launch was loosely centered around “American Classics”, I announced that moving forward, we’d be doing “themed launches” around specific genres.

Some of the genres on our internal list include: Westerns, African American Literature, Romance, Horror, Women’s Literature, Mystery and Japanese Literature.

While the response to The Vending Project was overwhelmingly positive, several individuals were outraged that I had filled the vending machine with “Male Manipulator” writers and were complaining that I hadn’t included any women writers.

The irony was that none of these individuals ever actually visit the machine and because of this, they didn’t see that in addition to authors like Hemingway, Steinbeck and Bradbury, I also included authors like Woolf, Angelou and Austen.

And, what was even more ironic was that not only did these individuals not put up a single dollar of their own money to this charitable cause, but they didn’t even live in Nashville.

Here was my response to one of these critics…

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.