Heed the Call

Hey there. It’s been awhile. 1 year, 2 months, and 7 days to be exact.

So why did I stop sending these emails? Well, like most things, starting takes a herculean effort. You push aside the negative self-talk and internal resistance. You make time for it. You take action even though it feels contrived and strangled. You overcome all of that…

And then one day you stop.

Stopping has no grand farewell. No checkmark on the planner. It doesn’t go into a google calendar. We don’t celebrate it and we don’t speak about it to friends and family.

It simply vanishes. A ghost of something you once cared deeply about.

Like a childhood toy, a past lover, the hobby that was once integral to your life.

Days glide into weeks and weeks into months until it becomes nothing but a smoky memory.

And with this newsletter, I made space for other things. Other projects and parts of life called to me more than this. One of them being my (now) 2 kids. Another is a mobile app made to reduce screen time that should be on the App Store within a month.

I find I’ve always enjoyed my life best when listening to these “calls”.

Now I don’t know your religious or spiritual flair, so you may call this feeling God. You may call it the universe giving you a sign. Intuition. I like “calling” because it can mean all of those things.

Something, from beyond what we can measure, see, or touch, is speaking to you in a language that can only be heard and felt by the receiver.

It’s how you know you love someone. It’s how you know you don’t. It’s how you know what interests to pursue and it’s how when you see a picture of a far away land in a book you feel a voice say: I MUST go there one day.

Every stage of my life had these calls.

Hiking the John Muir Trail.
Joining Americorps after college instead of getting a job.
Choosing to work on the border of Mexico instead of Idaho as a Wildland Firefighter.
Starting a podcast.
Moving to Austin.
Writing a book.
Proposing to Ashley.

You’ve probably thought about swiping or clicking away from this email multiple times by now. Maybe that’s in part because I haven’t done a good enough job of keeping your attention but it’s also because there’s so much competition for your attention at any given moment.

I think most of our current depression, angst, and anxiety comes from being unable to hear the call in the midst of all that noise. And if you can’t hear it, how are you supposed to heed it?

So I’m not sure what that means for this newsletter. Today I sat down in the shade of a towering oak in our front yard and heard the call to sit down and write this to you guys. I’m not sure when I’ll hear it again.

So until then, I hope you get a call. And if you do, try and heed it.

✌🏽 Alex