On giving a shit

And wanting things again

I’d been lifting since I was 13 or 14. Over time, I slowly amassed a wealth of knowledge on programming for training, movement cues, diet, everything. No one asked me to. No one told me to. I just did it because, for some unknown reason, I gave a shit. It showed. In college, I peaked at a 1,400-pound total (squat, bench, deadlift) at 170 pounds bodyweight. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, all you need to know is that’s really fucking strong.

I don’t remember what my day-to-day felt like back then. There’s no felt difference between being able to deadlift over 600 pounds and being unable to. But I remember how it looked. Cooking higher-protein, whole food meals. Diligently warming up. Fine-tuning little body cues to optimize the transfer of my body’s energy to the bar. Adhering to a program with specific weights and reps that I needed to hit each week. It felt like real-life Runescape.

Starting the spring of 2021, before I graduated, I began dieting down for EZOO, an EDM festival (yes, I know), because I wanted to be shredded. I weighed out five grams of cashews. I ate zucchini noodles with home-made pasta sauce sweetened with stevia instead of sugar. I began running with my shirt off to start tanning, and some Boston asshole said, “Woah woah, slow down Bruce Lee.” I hurt my back. I kept dieting. I got shredded. People wanted to touch my abs.

After EZOO, I started working full-time. I had some serious bravado: I told myself I’d not only return to my peak strength levels, but surpass them. 550-pound squat. 365-pound bench. 700-pound deadlift.

I never did.

I had an existential crisis soon after I began working. Watching all my stories around success and meaning unravel, the desire to push myself to pursue a goal as I had before lost its juice. I’d done it in pursuit of my Wall Street job, and I felt miserable. I realized I’d tied so much of my identity, and with it, my worth, to the attainment of goals. Checkboxes. Jacked and strong. High-paying job. GPA. “No more,” I told myself.

I began letting go of the need to try in the gym. To the outside observer, it might not have looked that way. I still went four or five times a week. Still meal-prepped healthy food. But I knew how it felt before; the intensity was gone. I may as well have been going through the motions.

The pattern repeated with creative work. In December of 2022, I decided to quit my day job to go all-in on YouTube. There was a clear goal, even if I masked it behind the intention of “Build as much momentum as possible before I quit.” Momentum meant 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, which I needed to get monetized on YouTube. I also started the early version of this newsletter.

For a few months, I posted two videos a week and a newsletter while working full-time. At first, it felt exhilarating. I’d wake up at 5 AM, literally launch out of bed to my desk (I lived in a studio), work on YouTube or write, then go to the gym before taking the F-Train into Manhattan. The intensity was back.

Then I burnt out.

I realized I’d been putting out videos for the sake of it. And so I stopped, reoriented, and somewhere in that reorientation, swore off setting goals altogether.

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For the last few years, I’ve set intentions rather than goals. I’d say almost proudly: “I find that when I set intentions, things have a way of unfolding on their own.” True, they do. Last year, community, intimacy, and play showed up in ways I couldn’t have manufactured myself. Life moved through me when I allowed it to.

I still go to the gym three or four times a week. I add a rep here, some weight there. But it’s been amorphous. Undefined. I haven’t gotten stronger or put on muscle since college. And honestly, I’m at peace with that. I don’t need either of those things to feel worthy anymore; healing that I’m deeply grateful for.

And yet, I feel an itch.

“What if I gave a shit again?”

There’s a difference between not needing something to define your worth and not caring about it at all. I’d conflated the two and created a binary: either you set goals, or you set intentions. Goals had made me miserable, so let’s discard them entirely. But in the process, I let go of what it meant to want something purely for the sake of wanting. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Much of my intention-setting became a form of avoidance. A way to not feel the grief of the pain goals had created in my life before. A way to avoid wanting something specific and feeling all of the emotions that come with not getting it.

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Adults ask, “Why?” I did. A lot. It was a useful question to consider what mattered to me during a time I really reckoned with how decisions I made left me miserable. But in the process, everything needed to have some grand purpose or intention. Which meant most things didn’t. How could squatting 500 pounds or learning guitar matter more than empowering people to live more meaningful and fulfilling lives?

In 2024, I put on my vision board: “Why not?”

No explanation. No target attached. How a child responds when you ask them why they’re drawing on the wall.

Joe from Art of Accomplishment talks about a tennis player whose coach asked her to hit a trash can. She hit it two or three times out of five. Then the coach asked her to aim for a quarter. She missed every time. When they went back to the trash can, she hit it every single time. The goal didn’t need to be met; it just had to exist. Having something to aim for changes how you orient yourself. It changes you.

I want to squat 455 pounds again. Not because it means anything grand. Not because it’ll make me worthy or purposeful or legible to anyone. But because why not? I enjoy lifting heavy weights. I want to bring some structure back, some intensity. Not the life-or-death version I used to feel every workout, but the devoted version. Dusting off the belt. Sticking to a program. Showing up differently because there’s something I want to show up for.

What I’ve found is that the goal itself matters less than what it asks of me. Training for 455 means I warm up more thoughtfully, sleep better, and care more about what I eat. Not out of discipline, but because I’m oriented toward something I actually want. The goal doesn’t become an authority; it’s a companion.

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Giving a shit has become one of my principles this year.

I notice it most when I cook for people. I think about every little detail. What will make this more enjoyable? Leave someone feeling cared for? Loved? Something as simple as slowly frying some garlic to infuse the oil before making eggs, then using the fried garlic as a garnish. That’s devotion. Not burning yourself out or attaching to outcomes. Caring for the sake of caring. Giving all of yourself to something because you can. Because it brings you alive. Because why not?

I’ve felt this most recently with Homie Calendar, an app I’m working on. I’m not building it to make money or acquire validation, but rather, because I care deeply about friends spending more time with their friends. The pop-out needs to be centered, not left-aligned. Keyboard shortcuts for the desktop users. Personalized invite cards instead of six-digit codes.

There’s a phrase I keep coming back to: “I want to pour myself into life and be poured back into in turn.” For a long time, I think I’d been doing neither. I’d been afraid to want too specifically. It’s okay to want a wide, expansive thing like ‘contribution’ or ‘community,’ but to want a specific job with a specific company, a certain kind of relationship, to squat a certain number? To choose one thing among everything else in the world and say, “This, this is what I want.” That felt vulnerable in a way I wasn’t ready for.

I’m ready now.

I want to give a shit again. Not the old way, where wanting something meant it owned me. But this new way, where wanting something means I’m in life, moving toward it, my days shaped by the moving.

Why not?

Taken by Emma