I'm giving myself one year to change my life, forever. (Maybe it will help you, too)

As a writer with unmedicated ADHD, enormous ambition, and a bullish need to make all of this happen against. All. Odds.

This might be the most important personal essay I ever write.

(If you’re new here—welcome)

Because, it’s not an essay meant to convince you to follow a specific system, framework, or idea. It’s not an essay meant to expose the blockades you’re setting in front of you, despite how tempting those blockades are. It’s not an essay meant to show you the obstacles you have used to form a barrier around your heart and mind. It’s not an essay meant to persuade you to read any specific book, listen to any specific podcast, or watch any specific film.

This is not one of those essays. To pretend it’s one of those essays would be dishonest to myself, and to you, and I don’t plan on indulging in those temptations that most aspirational “thought leaders” tend to do.

I’m writing this essay with one intention, one goal, and one vision:

To hold myself accountable for the one unified dream I’ve fought against, returned to, accepted through spiritual blood and tears, and desperately place back on a pedestal with wounded hands—to think (and write) for a living.

This has been extraordinarily difficult to confront, because it doesn’t even make sense to myself. This isn’t one vision. It’s a visual and mentally transcribed amalgamation with many individual paths intervening, slithering about, and layering into one another like cannibalistic serpents.

That being said, I acknowledge the uncomfortable and beautiful truths that exist within this visionary ecosystem.

I understand and celebrate the complicated nature of this mission, and the suffering required to make these happen. But, what comes with that suffering will be grandiose, beautiful, and stunningly magnetic. That is a promise that threads through every vocation.

This essay might—and I hope will—serve you well if:

• You have an enormous vision, purpose, and unbelievable fire within them to create the life, work, and/or business they want to create

• You are intensely neurodivergent, creative, and/or eccentric in ways that have always been different to their social and mental company, and wish to learn from someone else’s bullishness who not only understands how you perceive yourself and world, but wants to prove through example that these particular systems and frameworks can work (in a specific amount of time)

• You have goals and dreams that no one else understands, but you recognize that this doesn’t matter; what matters instead is your drive to achieve what you want, in your way, through expanding and building a mind and series of creative systems you can call your own

• You know you’re not meant to “niche” down, or “build a personal brand,” and you recognize what you want extends far beyond that, and far deeper than those commonly talked about areas of improvement

I’m not pretending to have all the answers. (I never will, and neither will you)

What I am promising you, Dear Thinker, is that my intention is to hold myself accountable, so that I can circle back to this essay one year from now—in the first week of February, which is when I will be publishing this—and see if I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Whether I fail, whether I win, or whether I accomplish more or less than expected, I plan to take the steps I’ve built as lessons for the next attempt.

This will require relentless, unbelievable focus that will demand more from my attention span, restlessness, and creative energy than anything else I’ve ever done in my entire life.

But, it will be more fun, fulfilling, and importance than any other challenge I’ve committed to before, because it’s a challenge I’m building for myself.

And I hope it will inspire you to do the same, in your own way.

Let’s begin.

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Prelude — What Made Me Want to Change.

Whether it’s the product of my episodes of manic obsession, or my neurodivergency, or something else, or perhaps a combination of many unknown and known things, I have a tendency to go 100% into something, with no room for error, and no room for order.

In the last decade, I’ve gone through dozens of phases where I’ve plunged into a new business, built a brand from nothing, launched it, and burned it all to the ground within days, if not weeks, or even months.

You deserve concrete examples, so if you’re interested in those, you may pause your reading to soak up the compilation below of my past learnings, mistakes, and failures.

My most recent venture, a LinkedIn ghostwriting business for venture capitalists and angel investors, lasted eleven months before I suffered a three-hour-long mental breakdown, and burned it all to the ground. I hated the work, hated the experience, and loathed myself for falling back into a cycle I had unknowingly built ten years prior.

Before that, I had started, rebranded, and relaunched multiple copywriting and brand messaging practices for B2B enterprises and agencies.

I had started several newsletters and media brands that I burned down within 48-72 hours—including an investigative journalism brand focused on small, interesting coffee startups, and an Instagram-only media brand poking fun at celebrities and pop culture literacy around caffeine culture, inspired by another account I found under the handle “girlswithgluten.”

(Shame the latter didn’t work at the time, and I might return to it some day; really loved the idea and had fun making those posts)

Some other ventures that never got off the ground were an athleisure clothing brand with not enough differentiators to make it relevant, and a connected line of decaf-only flavored coffee that actually tasted good for anxious people.

I also worked full-time in corporations and contract gigs. I was a content designer and copywriter for Nike. The team was great. Loved my boss. Experience was not fulfilling, though. Similar story with Meta, where I was their content designer for the Meta Pay experience, working with other brilliant people. More autonomous than expected, but again, the work was not fulfilling. Got laid off with thousands of other people, and was too traumatized by tax mistakes years prior to jump back into the entrepreneurship world.

Not to make this read like a “woe is me” kind of story, but it’s the truth; after the layoffs, I found myself going through severe physical and mental trauma while working at a large fintech conglomerate—that lasted only four months—and at a health tech startup that I swear, to this day, nearly destroyed me.

This isn’t as important, but I was also a wedding photographer for a few minutes months. Had invested a shocking amount of money into courses, mentors, programs, and equipment. Convinced myself I hated writing online after getting severely burned-out in corporate environments.

(You might already be spotting a pattern here)

When I started ghostwriting, I didn’t know what I wanted to write, other than fiction. I always loved writing, and had plenty of experience writing copy. I didn’t know how I was going to take advantage of the digital landscape, and fall back in love with digital writing while convincing myself I was doing exactly what I needed to do.

The problem was, I was “good” at most fields of writing, but didn’t excel properly at any of them. I was good at writing websites, landing pages, and sales letters. I was not interested in writing white papers, but I knew how to do it. Social content was more lucrative, but the extra hours required to make those pieces of writing work were exhausting, unfulfilling, and poisonous.

My constantly flitting attention and desire to learn every little thing made it very difficult to “master” any particular field of copywriting, or skills in general. I didn’t like writing—or doing—one thing, or following formulas, or marketing myself in one specific way.

I also hated people, so I dreaded every single call I hopped on. I hated messaging strangers on the internet to “network.” I hated the illusion of relationship-building embedded within the digital trenches of social media. It became a twisted vortex of falsehoods, brain-rotting self-attribution, and nothing but the desire to be alone, alone, alone.

I’ve also rebranded this newsletter, The Oyster, many times. Now, it feels like it’s heading in the right direction, but we’ll discuss that deeper in the letter.

Think this is enough context for you to understand the plight I’ve built, choosing to learn from these pits of suffering than wallow in self-pity.

If you want the simple story, it’s this:

I learned, very quickly in my early twenties, to brainwash myself into being “good enough” as a copywriter, an employee, and even a daughter, to get work done.

To pay the bills. To ignore the rapid pacing of my heart whenever I stepped into the office. To brush off the immense feelings of inadequacy from people who breathed down my neck; stabbed me in the back with such ferocity you would think they were my enemy, not my manager;

For an entire decade, I had built myself an Internal Prison, and threw away the key. I had forged padlocks out of self-sabotage, anxiety, depression, cognitive misalignment, panic, fear, and extreme creative drought.

I was working against everything about myself that I secretly longed to give wings, but had no idea how to reach it.

I knew what I loved, but I never listened to it. I loved learning. I loved self-educating. I valued becoming the best possible thinker and writer I could be. I was always extremely competitive, from on the tennis court to beating my own word count records writing my unpublished fiction. I loved art. I loved creating more than consuming. I loved reading long-form materials. I loved watching films, playing narrative-driven video games, and creating my own worlds. I loved studying philosophy, narrative, and the logical within the abstract—as well as the abstract within the logic—across many mediums worth deep discussion.

Oh, how the world of fiction saved my soul. How it wrote love letters to my childhood. How it planted the seed of telling stories before I ever knew how a proper story could be told. I loved writing before I loved creating. The relationship held me together through the darkest, most vicious times. I owe my life, my soul, my everything to the imagination I was blessed to be born with. I’m not saying this to gloat, but to encourage you, if you feel the same, to listen to those magical moments of daydreaming, solitude, and mental exploration that extends beyond the Self.

I knew what I hated, as well, but listened only to those voices. I hated working for other people. I hated wasting my time building other visions that were not my own. I hated sacrificing my sanity pleasing people who were mental and spiritual abusers. I hated how accustomed I became to not eating. I hated watching my bank account drop below zero, with no idea how to stop it, when all I had done was save, work, save, work, and save and work and save and work. I hated how easily I let the plights of others distract me from my own desired path. I hated politics, and how easily those narratives pulled me into a dark Abyss of destruction, defensiveness, and vitriol.

My story is not unique. Neither is yours.

This is not a calling for negative self-application, but a calling to be aware that because neither you or I are unique, that our opportunities are endless. Boundless. Beyond what we can imagine.

If I were to illustrate the entirety of my story, it would take hours.

What you have now is enough to know that I simply realized enough was enough, and I needed to take radical action in order to change.

Nothing is more important than holding yourself accountable for creating. Your one moral obligation as a human being is to build, make, and work with your hands, your mind, and your unique imagination. If you do not do this for yourself, you’re committing one of the worst crimes you can commit against. a human being: shirking your footprint on this planet, and the one life you have the privilege of living.

In order to enact on the following goals, I need to be mindful of what I truly want to accomplish, and what I envision myself doing for my Ideal Dream Life.

If you want the simple version, it looks something like this:

• Wake up at 6:00 AM + morning walk every day—no alarm, no rush, no acceleration; simply getting up and moving for the first walk of the day

• Write and create newsletters, podcasts, social content, etc. I deeply care about, on topics I’m excited to explore every day—from unraveling the human condition across scientific and intuitive discussions of the soul, mind, and physical vessel, to philosophies of the future of artistic integrity, thinking, and more

• Write fiction every day, and make real money from it—from the manuscripts I’ve rewritten and planned to publish for years, to short stories, to whatever else I want to create with my first love: fictional storytelling

• Fuel my body to perform the best it possibly can, every day—from eating intentional, nutritious food (without budgetary constraints), to regular exercising that stimulates my competitive brain and challenges my mental and physical muscles

• To provide financial assistance (without issue) for my sister, my mother, my father, and my closest friends where and whenever needed—because this is one of the main reasons I want to exceed far beyond a personal monetary goal; to provide and create stability for those I love, who have never asked for anything, and deserve it beyond what I can properly think about

You can see from this list, that I want something very simple in the grand scheme of things, but will be very hard to achieve if I don’t take radical action:

To think, create, and write for a living—without compromising who I am, what I want to talk about, or the interests I truly, deeply, obsessively love.

Is it impossible? No. Of course not. Many people have paved paths to success with similar, if not the same, goals as mine. In fact, I would say my ambitions are pretty insipid compared to the world’s most brilliant innovators.

My limitations are fictitious. So are yours.

Now that I’ve spilled everything I possibly can into your brain—granted, if you’ve read this far—it’s time to get into the tangible goals and accountability systems I’ll need to accomplish in order to reach this Ideal Dream Life.

In—hopefully—twelve months.

(Because, to be frank with you, the only way I can achieve goals is to be ruthlessly “unrealistic” about the margins of time; otherwise I remain complacent)

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Goal No. 1 — Write For Myself Full-Time.

This might be the most obvious personal goal, which is why it’s the first.

In my self-established Hierarchy of Accountability, this is the ultimate vision; the north star where everything begins, trickles down, and influences.

Through a combination of Substack, writing fiction, digital product distribution, future podcast and YouTube storytelling, and cross-publishing and promotional narratives on X, I plan to use my social and overall digital footprint to maximize any potential I can across writing for myself.

Writing has always been my truest love. It’s my first love. My first breakup. My first tested relationship. It’s broken me. It’s twisted me. It’s pushed me. It’s served me and rewarded me and torn me apart and built me back up again. It’s everything to me, and more. There’s no doubt within me that you, also, have a deep and obsessive love for a craft that you are pursuing.

Through every episode of suffering, pain, and hardship, writing has always been there for me. It’s led me down paths of destruction and the most insane twists and turns of happiness. It’s allowed me to meet one of my best friends—and through him, my life partner—learn how to find my own voice and style at a young age, and navigate the hard lessons earned through this art form.

I’ve now come to accept that even with my dozens of interests on a micro and macro scale—from film direction and score composition, to songwriting and cognitive science, to critical analyses of literature, film, music, and games, to photography and business, to branding, narrative design, and philology—the one element that always stuck with me was my love of the labor and machinations behind written storytelling.

Written storytelling is the backbone of my most impactful interests.

The actual connection between language, emotion, character, and story are fascinating to me through the perspective of the Creator and the Observer.

Which is why I realized it’s time to finally turn this obsessive, unbreakable love into an empire of my design.

This includes building a powerful brand presence (in my own way) across various platforms, but focusing primarily on Substack and X. I prefer X over LinkedIn, am quite fond of the writing interface, and appreciate the freeform opinions and curation opportunities within your feed.

My mission is to build a world of perspectives, stories, opinions, and knowledge so unique to my own interests and design, that I not only help people through sharing those pieces of writing, but also challenge myself to consistently share what I’m learning and applying across the mediums I’ve selected for The Oyster.

I lust for self-education and self-creation in equal tandem. To learn as much as I can about the human condition with my short time on this earth not only serves the essays I have planned for this newsletter, but for the fiction I’m writing.

This requires monumental growth, constant self-marketing and distribution, collecting feedback on a regular basis, and staying true to what I want to talk about—as that last habit might be the most critical to break the chians.

These are the steps I’ve systemized to reach this goal:

• Write for The Oyster every morning (two hours). I work on this newsletter in some capacity every morning, without fail. I have been for the last few weeks. I have to constantly rewire and retrain my brain and focus to remember—to visualize—what I want to build with this newsletter, and push through despite the minor obstacles that have swayed me in the past. During this time block, I write a handful of Notes—I don’t stick to a specific number, but I aim for more than two—and chip away at the longform newsletter I have planned for that week, or that month.

• Write, study, and cross-publish on X every morning (thirty minutes to one hour). I’m bullish about Substack, but also about X. I’m publishing more unhinged, unedited and raw thoughts on that platform, with the awareness that they must tie back into me as a human and what I’m writing at The Oyster. I’m using this platform to build a secondary world, with appendages connected to Substack. I use this time block to write and publish notes on the fly—I rarely pre-plan anything—and stick to a stream-of-consciousness voice for 80% of my output. (Strictly because I enjoy the style, it resonates with me, and it allows for opportunity to break the pattern for other readers on X)

• Cross-publish on LinkedIn (whatever time is available). I use LinkedIn lightly for some select client work, and use it as a gentle traffic source for my publication. I don’t spend nearly as much time as I used to on there, otherwise. My plan is to eventually phase this out to once or twice a week, and use X as my primary driver.

• Create a suite of digital products that provide real, tangible value. One of my biggest personal obstacles is not believing I have enough experience to teach others to do what I know. I do currently have a product I’m building—something small, ridiculously affordable, and I believe, quite helpful—for ADHD-addled writers who wish to follow their intuition and write consistently, every day. However, creating a suite of digital products with actual value, data, and customers to learn from will provide the opening of the floodgates to not only write, but Think For a Living.

• Build a raw, human, unfiltered presence on YouTube and my podcast. I have many plans for The Oyster, and myself. With my various vocations, I plan on documenting everything in a way that’s as raw and honest as possible, through podcast episodes and YouTube explorations into what I’m learning, what I’m creating, what I’m writing, and topics I believe are worth unraveling on a dense, intimate level.

There are various potential Enemies that I’ve allowed to thwart these efforts in the past. Mental health episodes, problematic hormonal imbalances, distracting myself with too much work for other people (that left me dreadfully empty), and my own inability to recognize that forcing my way through wasn’t necessarily allowing space for the planted seeds to grow.

This will require immense focus, discipline, and learning how to manage my unmedicated ADHD.

If you are similar, these are the methods I’ve been practicing to help keep these goals accountable thus far:

• Daily walking with podcasts, audiobooks, and/or ambient noise. The daily walks are nonnegotiable for clearing an overactive mind, managing restlessness, and clearing anxiety. I use these opportunities to listen to people to learn from, write down ideas for my newsletter and social posts, and follow the excitement of self-educated stimulation. Ambient noise is extremely important to allow my brain to think clearer, and pick up on bursts of imagination. In my non-professional opinion, I highly recommend ambient noise, classical music, or similar forms of light stimulation to help your brain, if you have a similar diagnosis.

• Keep my browser windows and tabs separate. If I’m writing fiction, I keep a special window for that open and out of sight. I simply swipe on my mousepad if I want to reprogram my focus from writing my newsletter to writing fiction. I keep my opened tabs directed towards the one task I’m working on during that disciplined time block of the day (as someone who operates in traditional feast-and-famine bursts).

• Read books, articles, and other long-form narratives at the end of the day. This keeps me focused on creating over consuming in the morning, when I feel most energetic and creatively restless. This can fluctuate depending on the season, what I might be going through, etc.—but the principle never changes.

• Record my first podcast episode and YouTube video with an emphasis on raw, real, and partially unscripted direction. My plans for YouTube might change (we might lean towards a visual diary on that platform, but we will see) but my podcast for The Oyster will focus on stories and thoughts I believe benefit readers like you, who wish to think in a safe, open space, and discuss the beautiful, dark, twisted human condition in a private, connected way. To do this, I need to not worry about perfecting a script, and focus on publishing the first episode—or few episodes—with humility, not pride.

These are not simple habits to adopt.

I’m still working on rewriting and training my brain to recognize these patterns and remain disciplined. I often fail, as well. I just refuse to let those tiny failures set me back a thousand steps, instead of ten.

I’m determined to continue destroying the pieces of my Old Self to make way for the new. In order to do that, I must stay committed to the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, and the challenging.

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Goal No. 2 — Publish My First Novel.

My journey to become a novelist is, perhaps, the most important. It feeds into the first goal, so I had to consider whether I should split apart the two of them.

In the end, I realized it was crucial to separate the two forms of writing and their intertwined-yet-separate vocations, as the journeys and mindsets required are still quite different.

Fiction is where I am happiest. Characters. Worlds. Themes. The privilege to explore what I find most interesting through fictional storytelling that resonates with select people who do find it valuable—while others, rightfully, disregard it—is a gift, and the greatest gift I could ever ask for as a writer.

I will be publishing my first novel this year—mark my words; this is lofty and ambitious and something I must write to promise publicly that I am going to finally silence my Inner Perfectionist and do the previously untouchable.

These are the steps and mental frameworks I’ve systemized to reach this goal:

• Write 4,000 words of fiction every day. I tend to over-write, rather than under-write. My first drafts are usually longer than planned, no matter what I’m creating. For fiction, my personal preference for dense detail makes my relationship with language a little tumultuous, since I find that most people seem to crave much sparser forms of prose. Still, I’m focusing on my individual writing style, and believe my novel might end up around 250,000 words in the first draft. Could be longer. Could be shorter. But, I must anticipate the potential of it being longer than planned, hence trusting my sometimes-manic intuition over hard-drawn outlines—especially if my plan is to have this first draft ready for rewrites and edits within three months.

• Intuitive writing > structured writing. My mind is a trap of contradictions. I have extreme intuition with my storytelling, but I struggle to stay focused, and fall into dangerous patterns of creating individual scenes and characters, but letting my imagination for the scope get a little too big, and a little too lost, to make a lick of sense. (If I’m not careful). I’m very aware of this flaw, and have been trying to find a real balance. My solution is to bullishly write this first draft with no holds barred, and only a loose “outline” to remind me the starting details of my world, my characters, their purpose, the themes I care about illustrating, and similar details. Everything else unfolds naturally as I write. This is the part of the labor that is so important for writers—and one of the main reasons why I believe AI-created fiction will never have the same impact as raw, true-to-form human storytelling.

• Ambient classical music for background stimulus. While I rely on binaural beats and similar ambient flows for writing my newsletter—including the one you’re reading right now—I rely on classical pieces, low-impact film scores, and other personal favorite pieces that use hard instruments and more specific sonic patterns to stimulate my focus. It’s been drastically helpful to silence my Inner Editor, who is always lurking behind my Inner Creator with a knife, ready to stab them in the back when they’re most vulnerable.

• Remind myself daily this is my life’s biggest dream. I wanted to be a published author in my teenage years. I lost my manuscript twice (well over a million words combined) to separate hard drive failures—a very long, painful, and raw story about my stupidity and foolishness—and I have restarted, rewritten, and re-imagined this first novel many, many times. I have other stories I want to tell. Dozens, if not hundreds. If I want to pursue any of them, or make any of them real, I must trust that this is the first story I want to tell—that I must tell, without excuse and without exception—and not the story I’m tolerating to make simply because I understand what most readers might “want.” (As a friendly reminder—never, ever silence your voice for the voices of your audience; your book is yours, first)

These ambitions might feel familiar to you.

If you are pursuing a creative vocation, you might understand the daily plights and struggles of battling the intuition over the systematic. You might want to listen to your Abstractions over the Logical. I understand you, deeply, and wish I could say I’ve mastered that relationship.

Unfortunately, I have not. Fortunately, this is a very interesting experiment to look back on twelve months from now, where I will—hopefully—have my published book ready to talk about, and celebrate.

Perhaps this can push you to do the same for yourself.

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Goal No. 3 — Read 50 Books.

I have a confession to make that may surprise you, but perhaps this isn’t too unusual as someone who fell in love with writing before reading.

I am extremely picky with the books I read. I’m a very curious person, but very few books truly captivate me. They must pull me within the first few pages and never let me go, or I will struggle to move past the introduction. Most people seem to be able to wait patiently for their interest to be captured. I am not one of those people.

On top of that, my interests are geared towards dense detail, deeper character-driven narratives, and an extreme impatience for lazy worldbuilding.

So, my challenge to myself is to intentionally read, annotate, and get inspired by 50 carefully chosen books. This will be a mix of novels and nonfiction alike, as most of my experience has been from reading fiction, and most of the books I’ve read have been left unfinished over the last few years.

Reading fiction is also one of the activities I enjoy with my partner. We read together, talk about our experiences, and debate over various things. It leads to some of my most precious and protected memories with this person.

As I care much more about creating my own worlds, characters, themes, and ideas, reading someone else’s work is not as instinctive to me. Once I find a book that intrigues me, I won’t be able to put it down. I will obsess over it. Salivate. Gnash my teeth over the thought of losing the immersion.

It is also very easy for me to fall out of love with something, in any medium, if I don’t stay connected to it in some way. Perhaps you understand this feeling. I’ve always wondered about why that is for some people, how it’s as familiar as breathing, or eating, or sleeping.

Fifty books will not be easy.

But, I want to become more intelligent, more purposeful, and more conscious of what I’m consuming. This is the best way to do it, and few things, when done beautifully, are more perfect for the human experience than the written word.

These are the steps I’ve systemized to reach this goal:

• Block out time in the evening to read, without fail. This allows my professional and personal writing time in the day to take precedence. If I listen to a book while on my morning walk, it will be nonfiction only, and even then, I usually detest audiobooks and massively prefer eyeballing words.

• Only read books I want to read. I will never understand people who read entire books—thousands upon thousands of pages and days upon days of time they can never get back—that they absolutely hate, just because they can. I’m hyper-aware of my ability to stop doing things I have no interest in. It’s very easy for me to stop in the middle of a book I don’t like, or start multiple books at once. So, I will only select and finish books I want to read.

• If I feel distracted, I will use ambient music to drown out the noise. I’ve had to do this many times. Not in a negative way, exactly, but because if I am reading something fascinating, I can’t stop letting that inspiraiton take hold, shut the book I’m reading, and jump to writing instead. I need to discipline myself to allow time for reading, to be reading, and to allow my time for writing, to strictly be about writing. Ambient music helps me focus on the task at hand, and I use specific songs for each activity.

If you’re an avid reader, you might look at this list and wonder what the hell my problem is. That’s a fair judgment. I’ve always wondered that, myself, while leafing through pages of books I’m criticizing and yearning to write my own.

I’m a writer first, and reader, second.

Maybe you are the opposite, or the same.

Either way, this is a symbiotic relationship that feeds each other. Without compromise, without barrier, and without brutality.

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Goal No.4 — Get In the Best Shape of My Life.

I’ve always been athletic—and very competitive.

The tennis court was my Enemy, and my Ally. My opponents were my unexpected teachers. My desire to see how far I could go with burning lungs, aching calves, and sweat dampening my back, my neck, my face, as the ball dashed over the net and smashed into my racquet strings like a clap of fucking thunder—let me tell you nothing lit the fire within me more than that.

However, my relationship with tennis has been both disastrous, and wonderful.

Let me describe this for you as plainly as possible: when you commit to a sport, you commit everything. Heart. Body. Mind. Soul. If you want to be the best, you must strive to be the best. No excuses. No limitations. No wallowing in self-pity. No allowing your Inner Demons to slaughter your focus. You do whatever it takes your opponents, and your Old Self in the dust. You should scare the fuck out of who you are to ever become anything worth hitting the battlefield.

When I tell you I plan to get in the best shape of my life, I’m not describing only the growth of my muscles, or the size of my calves, or how many pounds I can lift.

Those things are important. Without question. As a woman recovering from birth control and losing my menstrual cycle for four years, for example, I have to be more mindful of my bone strength, muscle strength, and endurance. I have to be more focused on building a foundation for independence for years to come.

But, I’m also referring to mental fitness. The shaping and strengthening of the intellect. The mind. There is nothing more important to me, at thirty years of age, than building myself into an absolute machine through Body, and becoming the most dangerous force of nature through the Mind.

This might seem ridiculous to you. That’s a fair assessment. I don’t shy away from intensity, because these words are the only honest ways I know how to express the importance of these variables.

If you only build your body, you’re focusing on one attribute of phenomenal human potential. If you only build your mind, it’s the same problem. If you dedicate a significant era of your life to building both with relentless dedication, gratitude, discipline, and magnitude, no one can fucking touch you.

You might look back through this article, and recognize that most of my goals thus far have pertained to a strengthening of the mind.

So, now, with that understanding, we can look into the systems, habits, and mental frameworks I am applying to get into the best shape of my life this year:

• Resistance train 3-4x a week. I’ve always struggled with “boredom” with my workout routine. I must stick to one plan at a time. Specific splits. Specific sets. Track my progress. View my growth. Fix what’s broken. Without compromise and without fail, I visit the gym and push my muscles to failure in focused, disciplined episodes. I will not let artificial boredom derail me.

• Incline walking 3x a week, and HIIT training once a week. My love of cardiovascular fitness has never stopped. While others love lifting, my love for fitness started with the exhilaration of tennis, and the feeling of sprinting doing a sport I cared about. Incline walking tests my mind and patience substantially, and I always put the treadmill at the highest level and walk for 20-30 minutes on my main training days. On days I’m not incline walking, I am either actively resting, or committing to HIIT training.

• Eat mindfully—without restriction, without judgment, and without disordered dietary patterns. I have struggled with orthorexia for years, and suffered from binge eating disorder in college. I’ve fallen for many dietary dogmas, and realized I was overcomplicating everything. I make sure to take in a high-protein, high-fiber diet, with 80% of my meals being home-cooked, and containing only whole foods.

It will require a significant amount of attention, dedication, and purposeful tracking—a skill I’m not that talented with, in all honesty—to make this possible.

The reason why I haven’t listed a specific number, is because that has never worked for me. I have battled years of dysphoria; improper illusions of my physical body that have been disadvantageous my aspirations.

For some, they can mark a specific goal weight, number, or ideal, and that will be enough for me. For me, I need the entire ecosystem.

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Dear Thinker,

One year from now—on February 6th, 2027, I will return to this article, and update with a note on my progress. I will also write a follow-up letter to document the journey in all its hardships, wins, failures, and little moments of potential brilliance in-between.

My hope is this letter provided you some insight into the goals and systems you’re trying to create. What you want to do with your life is never out of reach. It’s not a question on what you’re capable of, but a question on how far you’re willing to go in order to make your Ideal Life a reality.

Thank you for following along in today’s letter.

If this inspired you, or you’re pursuing a similar set of lofty goals, share what you’re thinking. What you’re going through might help someone else.

I will see you soon,

Taylor

The Oyster is a reader-supported publication exploring how to build an original mind by unraveling the human condition—across philosophy, meaning, cognition, creativity, the science of the soul, and more. Consider pledging to a monthly subscription to help support my mission, and yours, to think for a living. Thank you for being here.