Five Things I Think (I Think) 🎤

Where I've been and what I've been (over)thinking

Back in February, I interviewed veteran creators Rhett McLaughlin and Charles “Link” Neal / Photo by Taiga Fukuyama

If you’re receiving this email, it’s probably for one of three reasons.

The first reason is that we crossed paths in Chicagoland at some point in time. In that case…hello! It’s most likely been a while.

The second reason is that you signed up for this mailing list after stumbling upon the Powder Blue YouTube channel, or reading Creator Mag—a print and digital zine I launched in 2021 and developed through the end of 2022.

The third reason is that I met you at some sort of creator-related event…in which case you might know that I’ve spent the last year-and-a-half helping write The Publish Press, a 3x/week “creator economy” newsletter publication started by Colin and Samir.

Regarding the latter—for a life update, I made the jump to Los Angeles in January and have been living here for about eight months now. It’s been a hectic time, with a lot of craziness mixed in with some cool shit. But I’m feeling grateful for the opportunities that have come my way and blessed to be supported by the people I love.

If you’re curious to check out some the work I’ve been up to, I talk about it more down below. I recently capped off a project that I believe is among the best things I’ve ever written, and I’m excited to share it with you.

For now, though, I want to use this space to check in with some of the thoughts that are stewing and things I’m seeing within my purview. For a Sunday evening read inspired by veteran sportswriter Peter King’s longtime column, here are five things I think (I think).

— NGL

1. I think that while conversations around “work-life balance” will rage on for eternity, what I’ve been struck by of late is meeting some incredibly ambitious people who focus less on automating away their workweek and more on designing lives that suit them.

For example, I recently visited a veteran YouTube creator who’s one of the most recognizable faces on the Internet—at least, my corner of it. He’s written two books, started (and sold) multiple companies, and uploaded videos online to his tens of millions of subscribers (across several channels) for the better part of two decades. Past that, he also finds time to accomplish some truly inspiring and downright impactful nonprofit work.

All these years later, his output is still prolific, and he probably works way more than he needs to. Yet he lives just a five-minute bike ride away from his office, in a mid-sized city of roughly 80,000. On Tuesdays, he has lunch with his wife before heading into the office around 12:30, where he records three-to-five videos back-to-back. Then, off to his home studio (which he built himself in his backyard), proceeding to shoot a couple more videos in between playing with his cat.

I shadowed him over the course of a Tuesday afternoon, and after hanging out at his studio, I prepared to call an Uber for my last stop of the day: a merchandising company’s warehouse, also cofounded by this creator. To my surprise, he said, “Oh, it’s only a ten-minute drive away on the highway. You can just take my car if you want.”

For a brief second, I thought about it…before realizing, Ya know, while “I Crashed ____’s Car” would certainly make for an attention-grabbing story title, I’m not sure that’s the most optimal outcome from this trip. Playing it safe, I politely declined his offer, and have been left thinking about how someone that successful could live a life so relaxed and low-key that he’s willing to offer up his car keys to someone he’s met only a handful of times.

2. I think that ground beef, cornmeal, and ketchup don’t belong in the same concoction. That Tuesday evening, I attended a popular weeklong fair that’s held in the creator’s town every summer.

The first night plays host to a rodeo in a pretty large stadium, packed with fans cheering along as young dudes in cowboy hats attempted to last atop their bucking bulls for longer than eight seconds. Alcohol was certainly flowing, though I was shocked to see many patrons holding a familiar-looking beverage: Happy Dad, the hard seltzer brand founded by the Nelk Boys, was one of the event’s official sponsors.

Afterwards, upon prior recommendation from the creator, I tried a “Viking,” one of the fair’s best-known dishes. It’s basically a corndog with mushy ground beef inside (instead of a pork or beef frank).

Now, I’m not much of a picky eater. But even as someone who cooks pasta and meat sauce for dinner at least once every week, something about dipping warm ground beef into cold, sweet ketchup just didn’t cut it for me. Suffice it to say, with all due respect to the recommendation I received, that may be my one and only Viking.

3. I think writing is something I do for myself, precisely because I want to connect with other people on a human level.

On the plane back to Los Angeles, I finally finished Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, a 2023 book that acts as both the author’s memoir and an analysis on how social media has contributed to widespread radicalization. This paragraph (roughly halfway through the book) really resonated with me:

“The search for calm is why I write: to tame the chaos in my surroundings, in my own mind, and—I hope—in the minds of my readers as well. The information is almost always distressing and, to many, shocking—but in my view, the goal should never be to put readers into a state of shock. It should be to pull them out of it."

I’ve always viewed my writing as a selfish endeavor. It’s a way for me to process how I observe and experience the world, cooling my overheated toothpaste tube of a brain and squeezing all my thoughts out onto a page. Many writers, filmmakers, and general creative people I’ve spoken to feel the same way about their work.

Still, while it may seem paradoxical, that action of writing for myself comes with a deeper purpose: sparking conversation with those around me. We as humans are complicated, irrational creatures; to Klein’s point, writing may be the most calm way to both deliver and receive rational communications with each other (and ourselves).

4. I think you have to build confidence (but not feed your ego) to become a great storyteller. And confidence comes from doing the thing over and over again.

On that same flight, I watched the first couple episodes of Hacks, a HBO show about an up-and-coming screenwriter, Ava, who flames out after a controversial tweet. Her only career pivot left: moving to Las Vegas to team up with a fading standup comic named Deborah Vance.

Early on, when their car breaks down in the middle of the desert and tensions abound, Deborah tells Ava something that feels like the central thesis of the show:

“‘Good’ is the minimum. ‘Good’ is the baseline. You have to be so much more than good. And even if you’re great and lucky, you still have to work really fucking hard. And even that’s not enough.

“You have to scratch and claw and it never fucking ends. And it doesn’t get better. It just gets harder.”

Now, I’m not sharing this quote because I believe it’s a mindset to aspire too. While I’m only four episodes into Hacks, Deborah comes off more as a tragic character, not the hero of the story.

Yet something I’ve picked up on over the last several years is that no one is waiting around for you to make things happen. Completing a big, monthslong project is worthwhile, and taking some time off to celebrate is important. But the walk down from the peak of the mountain reveals another mountain, with a higher peak. Opportunity begets more opportunities.

The cool thing, though, is that the more times we do the thing, the more we build up our creative muscles, making the next mountain feel even more attainable from the onset—particularly if we don’t look sideways.

I’m excited to continue playing around in Hacks’ Vegas sandbox.

5. I think we underrate the excellence of longevity. On Friday night, I played some five-on-five hoops at the park for the first time in a minute. By virtue of being six-foot-three, I naturally always end up being tasked with guarding the tallest guy on the other team—which, in this case, was a big dude probably two-to-three inches taller than me.

Even with a couple scraps for rebounds and tumbles to the ground, I’d like to think I held my own over a couple of games…but I still woke up the next day creaky, bruised up, and sore as hell. And I’m only twenty-five—it’s not like I’m that far removed from my high school basketball days.

I say all this because I watched the last couple games of the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team’s Olympics campaign and came away captivated by everything LeBron James is doing at the age of thirty-nine, heading into his twenty-second NBA season.

Sure, there was something magical about Steph Curry’s playground theatrics at the end of the gold medal game, the inevitability the world feels every time he heaves up a three. But what impressed me more was LeBron gliding effortlessly to the hoop in the semifinal over and over against Serbia, spurring Team USA’s rabid fourth-quarter comeback. His otherworldly athleticism has always stood out; yet along with his basketball IQ, his body control and touch around the rim are what have made him special, all these years later.

And even though he’s a professional athlete, if he’s still doing all of that at thirty-nine, I have no excuses. Time to get back in the gym.

If you made it this far, I recommend checking out “The Year Creators Went Hollywood.” It’s a deep-dive exploration of the past, present, and future of the entertainment industry’s collision course with YouTube, as told by those building the plane as they fly it. What I discovered over the course of several months doesn’t fit any simplistic narratives, and the conclusions I arrived at are much less cut-and-dry than you might think.

A lot of work went into this piece, and it features over a dozen interviews with various creators (from Rhett and Link to John Green) and industry professionals alike. I’m quite proud of how it came out—it’s now available to read in its entirety here.

And, of course, special thanks to Moy Zhong for bringing the story alive visually through her incredible design and illustration work; Colin Rosenblum for helping me hone in on the key plot points; and Peter Warren for always offering the best story guidance I could ask for, without fail.

Thanks for reading! And shoot me a reply if anything resonated with you in particular—I respond to them all.