Life Update #3

The Editor's Letter

I owe you an apology, again, for the missing midweek essay. The silence was simpler than it seemed. I wanted to let some things settle into themselves before I said them out loud.

So here is the first one. My wife and I are having a baby. A little girl. She is due in September, which makes her a Virgo, which my fellow September people will understand the gravity of.

This took three and a half years. We tried for a long time and eventually went the route of IVF, and along the way I earned what feels like a PhD in fertility. But the thing I actually came away with was awe. Awe of the female body. Awe of Sophie-Alexia specifically. I watched her inject things into her body we both couldn’t pronounce. I watched her ride the swings, the close calls, the heartbreaks. There were stretches where all I could do was witness it, and be left without anything useful to say.

I have only felt that kind of speechlessness once before, when my mother was dying. There is a a kind of courage that only becomes visible when you’re close enough to someone to see the cost of it. I saw it in my mother. I am seeing it again now.

None of this happened in a clean season of my life. The exit from Open. My own health issues. Moving states. The fertility road underneath all of it. And yet I am writing this from Fort Greene Park, in a city I am madly in love with, and from here it feels divinely worth it.

Here’s the other thing. For alot of this process, I gave it up to something bigger than myself. If it was meant to be - I figured it would be. Call it god, the creator, love, the universe, whatever word survives your skepticism. If you believe, as I do, that some things are already written, then there are moments where the only available thing to do is surrender. I am not good at it. I am learning it anyway.

Six months of gentle—noise

Today I let myself look back, which I rarely do, and thank the version of me who trusted his gut.

Six months in, the editorial is at 10K. Instagram is just under 11K. We have worked with brands like Highsnobiety, Vogue France, Kulm Hotel, Dior Beauty, and others I still can’t quite believe say yes. I’ve taught in St. Moritz, Sicily, Paris, Berlin, and soon London. We’re in conversation with a few dream partners about making this work more accessible, which matters more to me than the logos do. I’m also starting a foundation arm to gentle—noise. A way to back the things that matter, with more than words.

Our little team is also growing. A head of business, a head of special projects, and soon an associate editor. And a lot of love and credit that’s overdue: Sophie-Alexia writes our Instagram posts. If you’ve read them and felt something, that was her. She put alot of work into these and as you can probably tell sh’s a far better writer than she lets on.

When I left Open, one fear sat above the rest. I didn’t know whether people had resonated with me or with Open. I had changed so much inside that machine that I wasn’t sure who was left when it was gone. You guys answered that question for me. You stayed. You showed up when I started going on about anti-optimization and standing on my small soapbox about spirituality, which is not a safe subject to build on. You sell out the events, some in under twenty minutes (s/o nyc friends). Beyond the ego of it, this confirmed the thing I most wanted to be true. That we are in a moment that asks for more. More than what’s on offer. More from those of us who teach and lead.

What’s next

Personally, I’ve been accepted into the Hoffman Process. For those who don’t know it, it’s an intensive weeklong residential retreat built around tracing the patterns we inherit in childhood and learning to release the ones we never chose. After the last three years of grinding, I’ve missed retreat after retreat, almost every real chance to sit with myself. There has been so much output and almost no input, and I’m starting to feel the deficit, especially walking toward fatherhood. I’ve met some of my own shadow lately and there’s clearly some stuff to process, work through, and eventually befriend. So I’m going. I’ll be offline mid to late July and I’ll tell you about it honestly when I’m back.

Paris, and the rest of you in the EU. I'm coming over in a few weeks to teach at a Vogue France summit, and if you can make it, I'd love to see you there. And if there are any Parisians among you, reach out. I want to know you're out there.

The podcast. After years of complaining about podcast bros, I have become one. I’ll try not to be insufferable about it. These episodes are less about me and more about the guests and how each of them keeps a spiritual practice alive inside this strange, beautiful world. A few of them will undo you a little. Some clues, since I can’t help myself: Groundhog. Grammy. The Box. Icon. It launches in September.

Guided meditations. A lot of you have asked. Yes. I’ve missed making them. This time I want to do it differently: starting in August, here on Substack, a new meditation and contemplation each week.

Help me out and let me know what you’d like to hear or more importantly, what’s alive for you in your practice…

That’s all for now. As always, I’m grateful that some of you trust me to share this and to walk a little of the path alongside you. I’m not a guru. I’m a friend further a few steps ahead of you on the trail who keeps turning around to check you’re still there. But I take that seriously.