If you gave me the key to a time machine, I’d travel to the past to backhand slap myself in the mouth after each one of my mistakes. There’s this running joke between me, myself, and I; we say our past can be divided into two parts: the part we regret and the part we forgot.

Please, don’t worry about my self-loathing. It’s cathartic for me, and besides, I love myself. In fact, a few people will attest that I love nothing else but myself.

And after the self-loathing, even I can recognize that there are many things to be grateful for in the messy middles of the many phases of our lives. Freedom is always a good one. I had some time on my hands this summer, time to “waste,” so to speak. And so you’ll find me on the road somewhere in the Balkans, at least for a while. Just because.

I admit that there are pros and cons to long-term solo travel. There are only pros when you start traveling, and they all turn into cons if you just travel long enough. It’s all the same as staying put and building yourself a family, in a way. The initial euphoria inevitably fades, and all you’re left with are crippling loneliness and logistical headaches.

“They say everyone has a choice to make: to be loved, or to be free.”

— Conor Oberst

The worst kind of loneliness is being misunderstood. You run no risk of it happening if you don't mingle with other apes. If that doesn't concern you, the other kinds of loneliness, including family, it's never been as easy to dodge them than it is today.

Every place has its online expat group, for example. I should have remembered that before deleting all my Meta accounts. I only have WhatsApp now. In fact, I did intercept one such WhatsApp group in Skopje a few weeks ago and got to meet some new faces over drinks one evening.

At a certain point, the age question came up, and we realized that among the four people there, at 36, I was the oldest. This was a first for me, or the first I noticed. The others were 32, 29, and 21(!). My gray hair was mentioned. The youngest, M, said, “You actually look older!” Then tried to soften the blow by remarking that it’s mainly because of how I act. Perhaps I was mildly offended by it, or perhaps I was mildly flattered. Maybe I would’ve been, if I cared about her fucking opinion.

It’s very true, as you get older, you find young people increasingly obnoxious, and how gross to have been one of them! They should know that, just like them, It doesn't matter how old you get, you always feel like you have your entire life ahead of you. Technically, because you do. Another thing to be grateful for.

For the record, M is a lovely young woman. If there's anything obnoxious about her, it's her smarts and looks. And the fact she laughs very loudly, which she does freely and often. And if I was mean to her in this piece, it was just for the entertainment value. And envy.

The road makes me inspired, so I'll probably be in touch with you again soon.

I hope life’s treating you well.

Bye for now.

I’m in Toronto till Sunday. Hit me up if you’re around and want to meet.

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

—Rumi

You’re Indiana Jones taking the leap of faith in The Last Crusade. Except pop never left any instructions behind, and there always seems to be another invisible bridge to cross, and then another, and then another. Sometimes you’re so busy with all the leaping that you forget where you’re even going.

On another note, I’ve been learning a lot about how to find more clients so I can be more successful, more renowned, make more money, hire someone to do the work I don’t want to do (and have them thank me for it). Because then I’ll feel a little less of a loser, a little less lonely.

Anyway, I’ve discovered that being a successful independent service provider boils down to two things:

• Knowing many people.

• Making sure they remember you at the right time.

To know many people, you reach out to people. You go places often to meet people. You help people get what they want. You care about people. You be a person people want to be around and associate with. You do not be an asshole.

To make sure they remember you at the right time, you be everywhere, all the time, so they don’t even have to remember you, because you be already there.

Good luck.

It’s been a while since we last talked. I thought sharing a piece with you could be a good pretext to reconnect. I’m planning to write more, and I warn you, things might get a little weird moving forward because I’ve decided to practice being more myself. Probably a reaction to everyone becoming a mouthpiece for their favorite LLM.

I have some life updates too, if you care to bear with me. Here we go.

All feelings
and no rudder;
all symbols,
little substance,
a relentless focus
on what's missing.

You want the universe
to feel what you feel,
but like the snake
and the lizard,
the universe cares not
about its children,

and you'll be alone
until the day you change
or die.

The most interesting thing about poetry, and art in general, as a form of communication, is that it doesn't matter what it means, but just what you understand and how it makes you feel. When art doesn’t speak to you, you should reach for your ears, make sure they’re still there. If you still can’t hear a thing, maybe you should grow a new pair. The message’s out, but you’re not receiving.

Onto the life updates.

I’ll be staying next door to this coffee shop for a while. If you’re in NYC too, let’s be friends!

One of the reasons why I haven’t been writing to you much for the past year or so is that I’m writing a book. Brand New, Homemade: The DIY Branding Guide For the Small But Mighty. Writing a book is not easy, and it takes time. It takes more time than you thought in your most pessimistic estimations. And it’s not easy because I have to constantly battle with that voice in my head, a broken record now, telling me that the world doesn’t need another book on branding, definitely not one written by me.

The voice is most probably right, but I’ve been writing anyway.

I’m dragging my feet at times, but it’s slowly coming together, and I might actually be able to publish it as planned by midyear. Kinda exciting, I have to admit.

I’ve been writing the book in public on Substack since October of last year. Why do I tell you just now? Because death before self-promotion!

Anyway, if you’re a freelancer, a solopreneur, or lucky enough to work with a small, close-knit group of troublemakers, I’m sharing with you everything I know about how you can create a brand people will rally around. If you’re curious, you can sign up below or have a look around here before you commit.

Brand New, Homemade

The DIY Branding Guide for the Small but Mighty

By Felice Della Gatta

And if you’re there, make a noise.

The message’s out.

Till next time.

They say only two things are certain: death and taxes. It’s tragic, funny, but also not true. You can always evade taxes; the problem is whether you can get away with it. And you can evade death too. Become immortal, at least figuratively, by, I don’t know, discovering some new immutable law of physics, or crafting a very good meme.

The single thing we really can’t avoid instead, is change. It comes for all. Actually, it’s already here; it has always been. You just can’t see it yet, and when one day you’ll think it’s past, you’ll still be changing. Still blind to it.

We change in little, unnoticeable ways: we get older, some get balder, the best of us get wiser. Some changes we can do nothing about, some others we can take into our own hands, but you know how hard that is, even after watching all those YouTube tutorials.

It may help to burn a bridge. Leave your job, change career, end a relationship, move to a new city, get a dog, have a kid or two, set your phone on “do not disturb”… forever…

Sometimes, it ends in disaster, and sometimes, we backtrack, scrambling while the bridge still stands. We never hear about it because it doesn’t make for an exciting story. Everyone knows how to fail just as well as how to blame it on the circumstances.

What I make of it is that the bridge we need to burn first is the one to our old self. There’s a value gap between who you are and who you want to be. You walk over the gap by acknowledging your values, and you burn the bridge by accepting them and so living them. We all have our values but are more or less aware of them. Too often, we’re selective about how we live them. We value health but eat trash; we value family but never call; we value community but gossip; we value honesty, but if only we could get away with tax fraud…

I hope it’s a little harder these days—it means that you’re still human after all— and that you find the courage to embrace the feeling lest it turns to apathy, denial, and shame. Don’t push back. Through guilt, you figure out your responsibility, and then you can figure out what to do about it.

Sometimes I work for free because I like you and it’s a small ask. Sometimes I work for free because there’s something I want and it’s not the money. But If I have to be honest, most times I accepted to work for free, it was out of inexperience, fear of commitment, definitely a lack of self-respect, and because—of course—I had the bandwidth.

Look, my free work is not as bad as Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, etc., performing for free at the Super Bowl half-time show. However, many say this is how we’re killing the creative industry.

Anyway, I did it again. This time, because it was important. Soon enough, if this work doesn’t get done, you, me, the creative industry, and many other industries will have other, more serious worries. This is the project of our time, and there’s still a lot to do. Read the The Carbon Almanac. Come land a hand. Join The Carbon Almanac Network.

The youngest Karamazov, Aleksej, runs into his older brother Dmitri somewhere in book three. For Dmitri is a providential stroke of fate. “… and he came to me like the golden fish to the silly old fishermen in the fable!”

See, an old fisherman once went out to fish at sea. He threw his nets twice and twice pulled out but mud and seaweed. But when he threw his nets a third time, he was surprised to see that he had caught a golden fish (not a goldfish, those only live in freshwater).

“Put me back, old man, and I’ll grant you any wish,” said the fish.

The fisherman was awestruck. He had never heard a fish talking before. So he untangled the animal and let it go, not daring to ask anything in return.

His wife wasn’t happy. So she sent the old man back to the fish over and over again, always asking for more, until one day the fish thought, “enough of this bullshit!” Took all the wishes back and disappeared forever into the depths of the ocean.

I wouldn’t dare drawing parallels between meerkat mobs and capitalistic societies, but it’s the fascinating premise of a book I’m reading.

If such a thing as the Allee threshold exists for products and ideas too, it means that you don’t need to push yours to the top of the bell curve all by yourself. Carry it just beyond the Allee threshold, and momentum should take care of the rest. Furthermore, by picking a small enough ecosystem, you’re guaranteed to have the threshold within reach. Then you could just work your way up like this, taking over increasingly larger ecosystems until you own the entire world.

Unless meerkats get there first, of course.

Expertise or throwing more people at the problem can narrow the gap between the two, but you’ll have to pick your compromise in the end. I wonder what it says about you when you always go for one over the other.

Do you always tend towards accuracy because you’re obsessed with quality, or are you just afraid to ship? Is speed a real advantage, or are you careless and in need of a good excuse for your shortcomings?

But one day, he went out for a run and broke his ankle. The convalescence would confine him to his apartment for a whole month. So Gary thought “you know what? I should really write that book.”

Everything happens in time and space. Make time, make space, block off a calendar slot, break a leg.

I’m tempted to ascribe such a happening to my boundless generosity, philosophic genius, and artistic talent, but we both know better.

Those two lines you forwarded, I could have screamed them from the top of my lungs into the void of social media, and it would have landed on few—mostly deaf—ears, and no eyes would have been opened. But here, over the soft murmur of all that goes on in your inbox, you and I agreed to meet for a few short minutes today and talk. Only the right medium can make this kind of magic happen.

Is it your job to navigate uncharted seas and retrieve treasures beyond imagination? Then you need not know where you’re going, but only how to get there. It’s called process, Aye!

So we’ve got practice, talent, motivation, luck, and self-reflection.

Are you pursuing success in things that matter to you? Then motivation shouldn’t be an issue. So you’re left with talent and luck on the one hand, not in your control; practice and self-reflection on the other, which you can exercise deliberately and create a virtuous cycle. The game is still far from fair; at least play all the cards you have.

In-office, full-time, part-time, meetings, Slack messages, Zoom calls. How long before we recognize these things for what they are? A violation of freedom.

It’s a portrait of Igor Stravinsky by Picasso. He didn’t draw it upside down, of course, but millions of people got to see it like that for the first time because that’s how it appears in the famous book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

Take ten minutes to copy this portrait as I’m showing it to you, upside down, and you may discover that you’re just as good at drawing as Pablo Picasso. All you needed was to force yourself to observe rather than assume, and all it took to achieve it was embracing a little awkwardness.

In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play two astronomers who discover a giant ass comet about to hit Earth and obliterate humanity. (Spoiler alert) nobody listens to them. Everybody dies.

In the film, people ignore the scientists’ message entirely but have a lot to say on social media about their appearance and TV performance.

“Miss Dye job’s shitty dye is melting her brain.”

“She’s nuts, but I’d smash that.”

“Meooow. Me likey hunky Star Man.”

I thought that was satire until I read the reviews.

“This end of the world comedy should have just been more fun.”

“This is not smart satire.”

“Unbearably smug and simplistic.”

All focusing on the appearance while ignoring the message entirely.

There were some highlights. I’ve rediscovered a long-lost passion for writing, I ran a 10K, I harvested olives with family, a providential stroke of luck got me involved in a top-secret project that may become the most important work I’ll ever do, I won a design award for one of my best clients, and it was a very successful year financially. But for the most part, the past 365 days have been a mix of activities roughly lumped together, sprinkled with all-nighters, and seasoned in burnout with a sense of guilt.

I read some comforting stats somewhere saying that I’m not alone in feeling like this. That’s where I’m at; finding relief in other people’s suffering.

Routine is the word I would choose to describe my 2022. That’s what I’d love to be able to say a year from now. I want to reclaim my time, work less, create more, stay in the open, take better care of my body and mind, and be a better partner. Routine is how I plan to regularly check all the boxes.

One year from now, what word will you choose to describe your 2022?

I didn’t put up such a sign when I started this newsletter. I had a rough goal to keep at it until it would either get easier or unsustainable. But without a definition for unsustainable, writing every day started eating into my free time until I didn’t have any, then into my sleep schedule until I had to pull periodical all-nighters to keep up, then into my relationships and my health, and only then it became unsustainable enough that I couldn’t write anymore.

You hardly noticed, but I haven’t sent out the daily newsletter in the last three days. I visited friends for a few days expecting to squeeze some writing in dead times but didn’t make it. At 4:00 am on Sunday, December 19th, I had a draft fully fleshed out on my screen but was way too exhausted to get it buttoned up and sent. For the first time in 228 days since I sent you the first email, I had missed a beat. I decided to take the rest of the vacation off from writing to metabolize the failure and come back to it fresh when I was back.

How symbolic that the moment I broke my promise of keeping in touch with you daily, the 100th subscriber signed up.

I hope you won’t feel betrayed, but I won’t go back to writing daily for the foreseeable future. I’m also taking a holiday break, and if you decide to stay despite the unexpected turn, you’ll likely hear from me in the first week of the new year.

If you’ve enjoyed getting my goofy writing in your inbox so far, it will make the best Christmas gift for me if you’d reply to this email to share your thoughts and ideas, and help me imagine the future of this newsletter.

Thank you for your precious time and attention. I hope you’ll be able to unplug and enjoy whatever good you have in your life in the coming days.

Talk soon,
Felice

1. Value risk
   Will users buy?

2. Usability risk
   Will they be able to use it?

3. Feasibility risk
   Can I build this?

4. Business viability
   Does it make sense for my business to do so?