What if You Could Erase Your Life and Start Over? | Craig Mod

Ever felt the urge to shed your old self and start fresh? Craig Mod did just that, leaving his roots at 19 to immerse himself in Japan through art, music, and long walking pilgrimages that remade him. In this candid conversation, he shares insights from his critically acclaimed book Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir https://amzn.to/4lX1J7Eon choosing fullness over distraction and rethinking what's possible when you honor your true self. You can find Craig at: Website https://craigmod.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/craigmod/ | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/introspective-adventurous-uncompromising-craig-mod If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Seth Godin https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL1Q1dzJOdFZzUGhyUWJidVlWUVJGT2swTzJaVGptQThpWnNUU3lQWUFZbUU about challenging conventional paths and thinking differently as an artist or entrepreneur. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So have you ever felt like you just needed to kind of leave the life that you've been living in order to create a clean slate that you need to live the life you yearn for? And maybe to be able to shed the old stifled you and reinvent yourself, or more accurately, reclaim the version of you that's been kind of hiding inside for years? That is exactly what my guest today did. Craig Maude grew up in a working class town in New England, but something inside drew him across the world to Japan at just 19 years old, speaking very little of the language. He wanted to, in his words, erase his old self and start fresh where nobody knew him or his story or his history. With no real plan and barely any language skills, he immersed himself in art and music

• 0:44Jonathan Fields?

  and writing and eventually publishing and bookmaking. And also along the way, he started these long walking pilgrimages, like 30, 45, 60 days that remade him from the inside out. And Craig eventually landed in what he describes as a six mat to Tommy room in Tokyo, which is like six yoga mats large, embracing a pretty minimalist lifestyle to maximize creative and financial independence. And that really set the stage for a breathtaking career as an author and artist, artisanal bookmaker and adventurer. And it's all supported by this global community of thousands of patrons now who follow along with his journeys and line up to scoop up his books, selling out limited editions within hours of publication.

• 1:29Jonathan Fields?

  In his latest book, the critically acclaimed Things Become Other Things, Craig weaves this unlikely journey into an intimate letter to a childhood friend while sharing insights from a recent extended walk. Along the way, he also shares some pretty mind expanding realizations like how choosing fullness over distraction is the path to living each day without regret, or why tuning out, quote, "tight feedback loops" allows him to go deeper into life's richest experiences and the surprising way that limiting beliefs imposed by wealth and privilege kind of shattered his reality at university, inspiring a total life reboot. And Craig also really shares a story that will make you question every excuse you make

• 2:08Jonathan Fields?

  about why you can't live with unbridled expression and adventure and a commitment to honoring who you truly are and sharing that with the world. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

• 2:30Speaker 01

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• 3:03Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Stihl. So I am not in the studio today. I'm actually out on the trail in the Rockies at about 6,000 feet above sea level in Boulder. The leaves are exploding with color and it's just stunning out. And yes, I'm wearing my favorite Stihl hat. And just last night, I was wearing one of my favorite Stihl jackets, which, if you know me, is not unusual. I wear the hat almost every day, and my Stihl jackets pretty much live on me all fall and winter. There's even a Stihl shop back in town, practically in my backyard. Here is why I love them. Stihl is designed and tested in Jackson Hole at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski and bike and hike and climb and fish there pretty much every day. They have been at it since 2011, so they know warmth and they also know style.

• 3:47Jonathan Fields?

  Everything I have from them, it works great, it holds up in every condition, and also looks awesome. And their hometown down is 800 filled down, but it feels more like just your favorite hoodie than a puffy. And ski season is almost here, so gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stihl.com/goodlife for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash good life. Stihl.com/goodlife. Stihl, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Good Life Project is supported by Ernesto rugs. So a small confession, our front porch has been the most neglected corner of our homes since we moved in. It's the first thing anyone steps onto and it's been kind of greeting people with a sad

• 4:27Jonathan Fields?

  too small mat. Ernesta sent me their samples and now they're making us a rug. And the cool thing is for $10, you get five oversized 12 by 12 samples. So you see the colors at real scale in your own space before you even get it. So we lived with all five colors for a few days and cool morning light and golden afternoon light. And we're sure to be roused in the sky, but Caldwell just kind of kept quietly winning. The thing you're certain about isn't always the thing that fits. And because Ernesta rugs are custom size, cut to the ins, the one we ordered is made to our exact six and a half feet by nine feet space, not close enough. Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll

• 5:08Jonathan Fields?

  get $50 toward any rug of your choice. That's E R N E S T A dot com.

• 5:16Jonathan Fields?

  Excited to dive in with you. I mean, there's so many different aspects of you, your story, how you've sort of like crafted, living a life that I'm just so curious about. And then of course diving into things become other things. You grew up in a working class town in Connecticut, a kid who has access to, really is drawn, you know, from what I understand, to computers and music. And grew up in this, in this town and so much of it is woven through in just such like beautiful and intimate ways, this story about a walk in Japan, like decades later. But you made this interesting decision at around 19 years old to get on a plane to Japan. This is not part of an organized program. You're not part of like a pre-plan school. You don't speak the language. Take me into this.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I wanted to drop out of university because when I got to school, the sort of deficit gaps between where I came from and where most of the other kids who were at university came from was just really shocking. I'd gotten into a good school and it was a bunch of kids who were just from extremely privileged backgrounds. And so I didn't have the emotional intelligence to process it or to respond to it. I think I started speaking with like a fake British accent, like accent, like I wasn't even trying to, like it was just there, my brain was just completely hay wiring. I just remember speaking to someone. They're like, you have the most beautiful accent. I was like, do I have accent? It was like, oh, God, now I have to pretend to have this accent.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  There was a lot of things that made it really uncomfortable for me and I didn't have any mentors or archetypes to guide me through it or talk to through it. So my plan was simply to just drop out of school. And I thought, well, while I'm still in a school context, I can use that to do something interesting. And I can, I can say, hey, I'm a university student in America. Can I come for a year abroad to your university in Japan? Whereas I think if I didn't have the school credential, that would have been harder to do. It worked out well for that. I just told my school I was taking a year off. I didn't tell them I was dropping out because my intention wasn't to return. I felt from an early age, being adopted, I think this kind of instills in you, it kind of plants the seed of you come from elsewhere.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  And so the pull to discover that elsewhere, or the pull to experience elsewheres was just always so present. And Japan felt like an interesting challenge, like more than Europe, like I felt like Europe I could go to. And if I keep my mouth shut, I kind of look like a European or whatever. So Japan was sort of like going all the way in. You know, in a way to kind of erase who I was entirely, which I think a lot, it was the reason a lot of people pick Japan historically, but Asia more and more. I mean, I think Shanghai served that purpose a lot in the 2000s when China was sort of in this really interesting moment of ascendancy. And not yet such a authoritarian grip on things, but there's a looseness there.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I used to, I was in Shanghai for a few, for six months in 2006, 2007. And there was like this really, really wild energy, really interesting energy. And I think the people that choose these places who aren't from these places are looking for that kind of self erasure. And then the ability to rebuild, which is what, moving to a culture that will never see you as part of their culture. And moving to a culture where they don't understand your history at all allows you to do that. So it's pretty powerful.

• 8:33Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, it's really interesting also because I feel like so many of us, when we thought about college, even in the US or in a culture where we, we understood it, we were accepted, like nobody asked. That's a lot of what we were doing, especially the first year or two.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:46Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, taking myself way back to like trying to remember freshman year and I was like, I was really excited. I remember like this, there's a visceral embodied feeling of whoever I was known as up until this moment.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:59Jonathan Fields?

  I actually get to step into an environment where I can choose whether I want that to follow me, or I can choose to step into it and just show up very differently. And then like actively choosing to show up differently.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:09Jonathan Fields?

  But what you did is the extreme version of that.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I tried with a British accent and I was like, this isn't enough. I need another language. I need people who don't understand socioeconomic kind of placements. And but I think it is important to have those moments, especially after high school. After, you know, coming out of your town, wherever you may have grown up, it's so constricting, you know? And I think that is one of the, if not the most important purpose of college is to get you to reimagine yourself, to rethink yourself, to learn how to think again. You know, these are all the things that I think are critical outside of just ticking off boxes of whether or not I have this marketable skill now.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  You know, it's, I probably should have gone to a really, really classic hippie liberal arts, tiny university college. That's where I should have gone, but no one in my family had gone to schools.

• 10:04Jonathan Fields?

  Right, like Reed College or something.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Should have gone to Reed. I should have like just shadowed Steve Jobs, taken some calligraphy courses. I like that. I think that would have made me a lot happier. But it's daunting, you know, facing that landscape. So you do, you do the best you can.

• 10:18Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I mean, when you get to Japan, then, you know, one of the things, because you didn't have any language at that point, right?

• 10:24Speaker 02

  I had actually taken two very non-intensive years.

• 10:29Jonathan Fields?

  Okay.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  University. So I, it wasn't zero, but it was very low. Like there was 13 or 14 levels of language class at the university I went to. And I was in two. So what, you know, that, it wasn't that great. Whereas kids who had studied at like real intensive language focused universities were, who had only done one year, were entering at like 11 or 12. So it's pretty wild, like the gap there, if, if you really put in the energy. So, you know, I'd studied a little, but I effectively knew nothing.

• 11:00Jonathan Fields?

  From what I understand also, like when you show up, I know a lot of people who actually ended up heading to Japan, sort of like early twenties ish. And they would generally gravitate towards those expat communities and kind of stay fairly insular.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:11Jonathan Fields?

  It sounds like you did almost the opposite. You sort of like immersed yourself and said, and it sounds like for you, maybe the language that was a little bit more connective tissue was music, was drumming.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I tried to not just get stuck in the cliques of foreigners hanging out with foreigners. I mean, all the people in my school actually were incredible. It was super diverse. It was folks from all over Europe, all over Asia, Australia. I mean, it really was like this idealized university experience and everyone was curious and hardworking and smart. So it was a great group, but I was also a musician and music had been a big part of my identity as a teenager and was also one of those. It was like computers and music were the two things that were kind of like, these are tools I can use to get to a different place.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  So I immediately joined one of the music clubs at university, which was only Japanese people and went for it, you know? And that was, that was quite good. And then my life was just immediately filled with, you know, I was in the studio all the time and I was playing in clubs and, and drinking too much. That's also where like all the drinking started too, cause like Japanese college kids is really, I mean, you think American college kids like to drink. Japanese college kids put them to shame and it was a really great way to feel embedded in, I think Tokyo. Like getting access to all these like secret clubs and like, you know, playing gigs and like, it was great. I was able to invite all the international kids to the, to the shows and, you know, and then we had all of our Japanese fans and blah, blah, blah.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  So it was, it was pretty fun and I had been playing, it's part of the reinvention thing. I had been playing pretty much like jazz my whole life, you know, I've been studying jazz. I was played a rock steady and, and reggae in high school. And I got to Tokyo and I was like, all right, let's do punk. So I was, I was in a three piece punk band.

• 13:03Jonathan Fields?

  As one does.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fun.

• 13:06Jonathan Fields?

  So you're hanging there and at some point, though, what starts as, oh, let me go to Japan and sort of like, there's this self erasure element, there's this immersing in a completely new, different context. And then, and then really losing yourself into it. How and when does the switch get flipped that makes you say, oh, maybe this isn't just a moment, but maybe this is actually where I want to be.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  In some ways, it doesn't get flipped ever. In, in other ways, I think it flips immediately. You know, I think subconsciously something flipped in the first like week. You know, just like to go from a place where the greater whole doesn't feel taken care of, where the resources aren't there, you know, and, and that was sort of what was the traumatic part of university was seeing people who came from obviously resource heavy places. It just, the shock of that, the inequity of opportunity distribution in America really knocked something loose in my, like really shook me. And coming to a country like Japan, I think I could have gone to like Sweden and had probably

• 14:13Speaker 02

  an identical experience, you know, just coming to a, a country or even like, you know, the UK in the early 2000s was probably somewhat akin. It's a little more weird now, but there was something akin to this happening if I was like studying in London, but just that sense that the people, the strangers you pass on the street are taken care of is a powerful thing. My friends weren't even taken care of, never mind the strangers back home, you know? And it's just, you just go, wow, okay, that's, this is possible. It's like really hopeful. I mean, it's really, really, really astounding. And part of what I think has kept me here too, it's inspiring to be near that. It's inspiring to live in a place that takes care of the people around you, you know, that you feel like there is this thing bigger than us.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  I mean, what, what's the point of building these societies, building these cities? If there aren't going to be, if those resources, and there is such an abundance of resources, is the thing that kills me about when we talk about contemporary stuff. And I mean, and really it's just talking about contemporary America is this inability to recognize the insane. Vast absurd amount of resources that could easily be deployed in such a way that even in the States, it feels like it does here. That would be so easy to activate. And it's just funny, that doesn't get activated. And it's one of the things that I think can be depressing unless you are in places where it is activated. You know, so again, like Scandinavia, big parts of Europe, Japan, and you see it functioning, you see it working.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Not without certain compromises to certain degrees, but I actually don't think when you talk about, oh, well, there's this cultural compromise or this compromise. It's more cultural compromises more than, oh, that's because of economic policy per se.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  You know, Japan does interesting things like you're a home loan, primary home loan in Japan. The rate as of like six months ago was 0.4%. 0.4%. It means that anyone, first home, it's only for your primary home. If you're not doing your primary residence, you don't get that rate. But banks subsidize the, I mean, it's not free, but it's effectively a free money. You know, 0.4% is like a rounding error. And then you can add things on top of it. Like there's a point 2% upgrade. So if you pay, you pay like 0.6%, you get a life insurance policy connected with the loan. Where if you die, it's totally absolved and that's the end of the loan.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  But also if you get diagnosed with literally any cancer, like if you get skin cancer, instantly the loan is nullified. These are really, really, really kind things to do at large. And like the idea of your first home should be, or your primary residence shouldn't be this thing of stress where you're worried about crazy variable mortgage rates. And you're paying 6% or 8% or whatever it might be. That's just one example of how you can kind of create structures that enable people to do the stuff they should do, which is not thinking about mortgages and thinking about paying off loans, but building companies or building businesses or raising great families. You know, these are the things that make, that raise, you know, the quality of life for everybody, not just the family itself.

• 17:16Jonathan Fields?

  It's just such a thoughtful way into creating, stepping into society and creating society in a very different way, like a holistic way where everyone feels like they're taken care of. I mean, it's interesting also, because you look at, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, the latest version of the global happiness study came out. It's always the same countries that are sort of like in the top 10. Well, actually, not always. The US used to be, and now it's pretty far down the list.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like 29 or something, wasn't it?

• 17:40Jonathan Fields?

  But it's, it's the ones that tend to have like really strong social ties and social safety nets, which is kind of interesting to see. All of this, I'm imagining, like, this becomes a part of like what you get really curious about and experience over time. But like, when you're a kid, this is not what's keeping you in Japan.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  No, but that sense of safety, I think, I think ambiently, subconsciously, you know, set a foundation to be like, oh, maybe this is a place to live. No, what, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just completely ridiculous. I was blackout drunk half the time. We didn't know anything about the history. We didn't, you know, we were studying some of theology and politics here, but we really didn't understand anything. And so when spring break hit, my friend and I hitchhiked across the country. We spent a month hitchhiking from Tokyo to Fukuoka, and we got picked up by, I don't know, 20, 25 different cars. And we would get blind blackout drunk with strangers in the middle of the rice paddies

• 18:37Speaker 02

  in Gifu or whatever, or like, a truck driver's truck got stuck on a mountain, snowy mountain near Hiroshima, and we had to like, kind of get out and help push it up and, you know, we're smoking cigarettes, and we're like, trying to push this truck. And yeah, we don't know where we are. So it was, it was pretty chaotic. And it was really just like, how do I, I was so hungry for all of it. And it was like, how do we just fill as much of this life as possible with everything we can see and everything we can touch here? And then from Fukuoka, we flew to Okinawa, we took boats down to Takitomi Jima, Ishigaki Jima, met a bunch of interesting people down there, stayed in a crazy hostel, you know, even people I'm still friends with. That was 25 years ago. I still am in contact with one of the people I met on that little trip I saw just two months ago.

• 19:21Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm, that's amazing.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  It was pretty, pretty wild, but that it was really just, okay, here's a safe place to do as much exploring as you want to do. I think that maybe that's really critical, a critical part of it is there was no sense of ever being in danger because Japan is so safe. And I think it just felt like, let's go for it. Whatever we can imagine, let's do it.

• 19:45Jonathan Fields?

  Was there a sense of urgency also? Like, was there anything, was there a voice inside of you that kind of said, well, this is going to end?

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:51Jonathan Fields?

  Or was it more of just an open ended, like, let me just do what I can do while I'm here?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Well, it was just, you know, for a year, that first, that first year, but the plan was kind of to go to California and do some design stuff. And the market collapsed when I was in Japan that first year. So like, suddenly Silicon Valley doesn't exist anymore. So I ended up applying to a different university while I was in Japan. I used the fact that I was in Japan as this kind of like lever to get into a good school, an even better school. So I ended up going back for that. But then in the summer between those two years, came back to Japan for the summer for three months and did an internship. And then as soon as I graduated, I was back again, in part because the language component was just so compelling. Like, that was the hook. Because I had taken Spanish classes in high

• 20:40Speaker 02

  school, but I was terrible. It was my worst class by far. I just couldn't do it without immersion. And Japan, I came to Tokyo and I'm immersed in all this music. And I remember we did that hitchhiking trip. By day, like 25, after having introduced myself several dozen times, and you know, you say the same things every day. Hi, I'm going to this school. I like this music. I do this. You know, and it's funny. It was like the wax on, wax off thing with the Karate Kid. You know, he's like, why is Mr. Miyagi having me do all this stuff? Why am I painting the fence like this? And then suddenly it was just there. It was like, oh, I have language now. That's wow. This is really exciting. And I think the music component and having a musical ear is a big help for that as well.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  And then just the kids I was surrounded by were great, great people and they were all talented. And so they were all just a couple of levels higher than me. So I was always hearing a slightly different grammatical deployment. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. What's that? What's that? What's that? That was just addictive to feel your body absorb this new language. And with it, like we were talking about earlier, the, the ability to be someone else, to, to feel your mind move in different ways from your mother tongue.

• 21:47Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  All of that was just so seductive. So I came back to go to university again and keep up the studies.

• 21:54Jonathan Fields?

  And at the same time, it's interesting because you, you actually have a chapter in, in the latest book, Things Become Other Things, literally titled Language, where you describe like, don't just hang out in Tokyo. Go ahead on to the other places, but also to hear the quote, dirty language.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:10Jonathan Fields?

  And then also then you, it really gets memoiry where you kind of drop into like how, what you hear in like the outer areas. It just brings you back to your childhood, the way that you and your friends used to hang out. So there's like a familiarity at the same time.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I mean, all languages, like if you're an alien looking down, all language is identical. Like, right, there's no real difference between, no huge differences between the languages in the end. But for us, like on this kind of like up close scale, there certainly are. And so then when you, you start looking for analogs, you know, and when you get out into the countryside of Japan, at first, unless you've really learned the language, you kind of don't hear what the local dialects are doing. That's also part of what's really fun about the travels is in the walking and the meeting people in the middle of nowhere is luxuriating in these different dialects. And you begin to realize more and more, it's like, oh, okay. In Tokyo, you don't really meet people. I didn't meet that many people that reminded me of where I came from.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  But walking on the Kii Peninsula in Mie, near Uase, talking to like old Fisher people or boat workers or the ama divers or whatever, it's like their language and where I came from. It is like, wow, okay, there's something, there's some, it is in conversation with one another, even though they are literally a world apart. And that's fun. I mean, like having the ability to do that, I think to notice that and to play with that is also exciting because it means your language has hit a certain level as well. And skill acquisition is fun, it turns out.

• 23:43Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, who knew, right?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:45Jonathan Fields?

  So as you decide that, okay, I'm gonna make this my home for like however long that feels right, you start to build a life, you start to build a living. You, as I've heard you describe for the better part of 13 years, live in a room that is a six to Tommy Matt room, which is like, think about like, kind of like the size of a yoga mat almost, and six of those, and the Western mind hears that and they're like, what?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:08Jonathan Fields?

  But it's not that uncommon, especially like in the life that you were talking about in the time of your life.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, not only is it not that uncommon, but also like in New York, people live in really tiny places. In San Francisco, people live in really tiny, expensive places.

• 24:23Jonathan Fields?

  Especially now, like posted San sized places, yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, I think it's even, it's worse and worse now. But Japan, I mean, I think Americans have a very perverted sense of like, expected space. Yeah, it's just like, there's, America's big, there's a lot of land, whatever building isn't that expensive because of whatever reasons. So I think a lot of Americans are freaked out by this idea of minimalist. But Europe, you know, it's like, look at apartments in Paris or in London, you know, or New York. I mean, there's a lot of smallness out there, Italy, apartments in Venice, things like that. And Japan, I mean, Tokyo, one of the great gifts of the city to people is that you can live in pretty much any neighborhood you want, and there's affordable housing in every

• 25:06Speaker 02

  single neighborhood. And if you're okay with something that's a little older, it's easy. It's easy to do. And, you know, the cost is just so low. I didn't come from an abundance, you know, it's like, my bedroom, growing up, was actually smaller. I think it must, I'm just, I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember the size of that bedroom. It was, it was so small. I mean, it must have been 100 square feet, I want to say, maximum? Is that even like, what would that be? 10 foot by 10 foot is 100 square feet? So, yeah, if that. It was like, that's basically the size of the bedroom I grew up in. So like, you know, I came from, I came from a very sensitistic sense of, of growing up. And so to, to live in these tiny rooms in Tokyo, which also were normalized, and so all my friends were

• 25:49Speaker 02

  living in small rooms. It wasn't like everyone was in a big room and I was in a small room. It was like a superpower, you know, it was really incredible. And then it also meant that I could be uncompromising because rent was low and I could focus on the work I want to work on. I didn't have to take jobs to pay for rent I didn't want to pay, jobs I didn't want to do. And I could just focus on thinking about books, thinking about bookmaking, building relationships with printers, building relationships with writers, artists, you know, just trying to engage with that world. Trying to basically give myself kind of a post grad, grad program of my own about how to be an artist and how to be a creator and how to be a writer and that, and do it all in, you know, one of the biggest cities in the world. So that's kind of what that afforded me. But yeah, it's a good training program.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  I feel like everyone for a couple of years in their twenties should live in a six mat tatami room apartment and sleep on the floor on a futon because you realize like, not only is it not that bad, it's actually quite comfortable. And as a material tatami is, is pretty astounding. I mean, I haven't, since then, I've never lived somewhere without tatami. I always bring, I always have tatami made. So that's the other thing that's interesting about tatami is like it's standard sized. Tokyo has one size and the Kansai has another size. But tatami makers will come to your house and they'll make perfect fit like a glove tatami for any room, any space, any corner. And they're happy to do it and it's not that expensive.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  So it's actually this kind of incredible material to create these spaces of, you know, just kind of spine leisure, you know, where you can just kind of lie on pillows and read books and, you know, take naps and roll around with your dog or whatever. It's like, it's an amazing building material. It's an amazing flooring material.

• 27:35Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it sounds super cool. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Your Life Project is sponsored by Quince. So these days I tend to want fewer things made well. That's how I'm thinking about gifts this year and it's why Quince is on my list. So Quince makes elevated everyday essentials from premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and stretch denim at 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Cashmere sweaters that start at just $50. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. Our executive producer Lindsay actually just ordered their organic cotton denim chore jacket in indigo blue. Her verdict, dreamy and soft. She also grabbed Quince's bees oil wood conditioner.

• 28:18Jonathan Fields?

  It's made in the USA from beeswax and mineral oil. It's food safe and it's lovely on cutting boards and bowls. And I actually just got the yummiest button down from Quince, which is great as the weather gets cooler. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about us, let them know it was Good Life Project. It's the best way to support the show. Good Life Project is sponsored by Talkiatry. So you know that moment when you finally say, okay, I need some help? That takes courage. And then you start calling psychiatrists and hear, we're not taking new patients, or our next opening is months away. Talkiatry

• 29:03Jonathan Fields?

  exists to change that. Unlike therapy only platforms, Talkiatry is psychiatry. It's a 100% online practice where a medical provider can diagnose conditions like anxiety, ADHD, depression and more, and prescribe medication when it's appropriate. All 800 plus clinicians are in network with major insurers, take a short assessment, get matched and have your first visit in days, not months. More than 300,000 patients have already found care through Talkiatry. So head to talkiatry.com/goodlife to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T A L K I A T R Y dot com slash good life to get matched in minutes. Talkiatry.com/goodlife.

• 29:49Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is supported by Kachava. So I used to think being salty was reserved for bad moods and pretzels, but lately I have come to realize that a little salty edge actually makes life and especially dessert way more interesting. Any pastry chef will tell you that a pinch of salt isn't there to ruin the party. It's there to make the sweet parts just really shine, which is exactly what Kachava pulled off. With their new salted caramel. First sip, I actually laughed. It's that good, rich caramel, a little salty edge and none of the sugary drawbacks. And it's still the Kachava that I count on. Two scoops for complete nutrition with plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, no fillers, no nonsense. Which if

• 30:34Jonathan Fields?

  you're feeling a little salty yourself is kind of the point. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use the code GOODLIFE for 15% off your order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A.com, code GOODLIFE. I don't want to skip over what you mentioned though, because this is so powerful, this notion of you having the ability to live in a comfortable space and really control your means, gave you the space to be uncompromising in what you said yes to. So you start to develop an interest in books, in bookmaking, in design, in art. And rather than saying, okay, so I've just signed like a big lease for a whole bunch of space and I literally need to take a job

• 31:16Jonathan Fields?

  largely to cover my living expenses, you make the opposite decision that a lot of people make and say like, let me minimize this. Let me sort of like really strip it down because the thing that matters most to me is I want to do the work that I want to do and I want to develop the aesthetic sensibility that I want to develop and that's paramount.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, for me, it wasn't even a question. It wasn't like, oh God, should I move into a bigger place? That I like, I had very little savings. And at that point, I did have marketable skills because I had kind of spent my teenage years, again, seeing technology as the way out, as the as kind of the hack to get somewhere else in the world. So I'd done an internship when I was 19 at like kind of a big, quite boring, but still everyone was really sweet, very nice and sweet to me, company in the valley. And it paid really, really well. And I just remember feeling that summer, I was walking around San Francisco with a friend and saying to him, Rob, I was like,

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Rob, I, you know, I can't do this. I'd already in my teenage years essentially concocted some artistic impulse that I felt I had to follow, that I felt I had to kind of like

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Abide by or respect or at least see through to some degree. And so when I got to Tokyo too, it was just, I was able to kind of continue that. Because I had touched that world of kind of high paying office job stuff. Early on, I was really lucky. I mean, that was like just such a fluke of an internship that I got. Random connections, IRC stuff I was doing when I was 13. Really, really, really, truly just like sliding doors randomness. But because I had already had that experience, I had sort of quelled that question mark inside me where it was like, well, what if I went and did this? What, you know, would it be? And that was kind of an ideal environment. Everyone was really sweet. There was no stress, kind of working on interesting problems and it paid really, really well. But the commute made me want to shoot myself in the face every morning.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  And I was just like, I remember making a covenant with myself in my Honda Civic. You know, with the muffler about to fall off, I'm on 101 commuting. And I was just like, we are never, ever, ever gonna ever agree to anything that forces us to do this again. I mean, it just felt death happening, you know, 19 years old already. So that kind of let's minimize costs in order to maximize artistic exploration and artistic freedom. It was an easy decision for me to make. That said, I think that you do need stresses on the system in order to push it forward.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  And I do think there, like, look, I've just been really lucky. But I also know that Tokyo can be so easy that you can tread water forever. And I know people, you know, you meet people who are in their 50s and 60s and 70s or whatever, that have just been here forever. And you can just see how they've sort of treaded water in a way where if they had maybe been doing the same thing they were trying to do, like in New York City. There's kind of a pressure because there's so many people doing, competing. And I think that could be really healthy. And so it's, it's just a matter of finding how do you balance that? But getting the basics of like not paying $3,000 for a shoebox is pretty silly. Get rid of that, like you don't need that in your life.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  And you can kind of figure out other ways to inject self concocted or found external pressures to push you forward as an artist. But the cost of living thing is a big cornerstone of it all.

• 34:42Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense and it really allowed you to just lean into this other part of you that was just like more and more and more like this is there's something that's speaking to you and you're like the aesthetics of bookmaking and art and design and also writing, you know, I know that you had sort of like a stint back in the valley for a hot minute when the iPad comes out, then flipboard and it becomes sort of like the darling, you know, of the new apps for that and you're there for a little bit and then and then you leave that to do a writing residency.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:11Jonathan Fields?

  What's the through line with writing for you? Is it something that was always there or is it something that kind of like emerged later?

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Oh, it was always there. I was writing, I remember I was writing Akira 2, like fanfiction when I was like 10 or whatever.

• 35:25Jonathan Fields?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, yeah, always there, always there, always loved it. And yeah, and was always just compelled and drawn. I remember Stephen King, The Dark Tower, The Gunslinger, that first book, I think it was like one of the first like adulty books I ever read. Maybe it was like fourth grade. It's like when you experience a great piece of art, a great movie, and you feel kind of filled with the essence of that thing and you want to emulate it. I mean, I felt that wholly with my entire body. I remember it so distinctly. I even remember like the opening of Book Two where he's like on an airplane and trying to eat this tuna fish sandwich and da da. And I like that's seared into my mind. So, yeah, this connection, this this love of or connection to books and like this sort

• 36:09Speaker 02

  of almost like pheromonal interest in prose. And I was reading Stephen King because that's all anyone read around us. Like that was the that was the deepest, most literary thing that was in in in town. And then as I got, I got into, you know, university and actually one of the greatest, there are a couple of great things in the tumultuous first years of university and one was freshman writing seminar and we read The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisernos. And, you know, hilariously, she's writing about this kind of immigrant experience and that book spoke to me like so, so intensely. Like, I'm definitely not who that book is supposed to speak to as far as I can tell.

• 36:49Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  But it was, it reconfigured my brain. Completely in terms of like what prose could do and how prose should feel. And I just remember, you know, emulating her soon after. And actually, I was in this emulation mode and I was writing short stories. And I wrote a short story, strangely enough, about Brian. So, you know, this is the main character, basically, or the ambient main character and things become other things. And the first piece of writing I ever really put out in the world was this Brian short story. And it actually won an award and was included in this national collection of fiction. Freshman writing seminars all over the country and Macmillan, I think, picked, you know, there was like 30 short stories from all over the country.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  And so that that got in there and I was actually commuting on 101 on the way to that job. Actually, I was going on the way home from that job and I got the call. They said, hey, you, you know, we've picked you for this thing. And I had written some insane pseudonym in for my name, like, like, I forget what it was. It was like, I think, because I was really into like Dr. Octagon, the rapper or something back then. And they're like, you should use your real name, like, don't use Dr. Octagon. And I was like, okay, fine. Yeah, use my real name. But it was, um, that has always been there, like this kind of ventriloquistic impulse. And, you know, really like the House on Mango Street thing really shocked me, I think, because of the simplicity and the power going hand in hand in a book like that, I'd never seen before.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  There were no airs, there was no pomp, there was no pretension. It was just really straightforward, simple prose that just freaking cut right to the heart. And I, I was like, wow, okay, this is the kind of literature that represents where I come from in a way that none of this other stuff does, you know, like Ulysses, like that has nothing to do with me. Or Pride and Prejudice, that has nothing to do with, you know, there's, there's no, I'm not seen in any of that literature, but there's something about that prose that really made me feel like, wow, okay, yeah, sit in this register for a while.

• 38:54Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, when things come together like that, it's just, it's so powerful. Often I feel like we don't have moments like that often in our lives. But when we do, I think a lot of us, when they drop, they can often be so jarring that rather than saying yes and standing in a place of wonder and curiosity, we kind of reject them, we rebut them, we even tell ourselves that this isn't happening. I'm not seeing or feeling what I think I'm seeing and feeling because to acknowledge this would be so, just jarring to my system right now, that it would be disorienting on a level that I don't want to be disoriented. So we kind of push it aside and then wonder why, you know, we quote, haven't found our thing or our things for our whole lives when it's been knocking at the door of our psyche for decades.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I think I felt the exact opposite. I mean, maybe this is self-selecting. It's like, as soon as I feel any of those, I'm just like running towards it as fast as I can, kind of like without look, without even looking, you know, 10 feet down the road, I'm just like barreling, barreling in that direction. Which I think the hitchhiking across Japan trip was sort of like that. We were just like so hungry, we wanted to just be fully intoxicated by how do we maximize like just being here and touching everything and smelling and feeling and eating everything. And I think that trip was emblematic of that. But yeah, I think a lot of, most people are really great at creating excuses not to do things. And that's why the cost of living stuff, I think, is great to have removed because

• 40:21Speaker 02

  that tends to be the most extensive excuse. I can't do it because I got this thing, I had to do this thing, blah, blah, blah. Especially when you're young. When you're older, things change and especially if you've gotten, if you opt into a certain set of things in your twenties and then you arrive in your thirties and you kind of double down on that stuff, like by the time you're 40, you're not going to, it's almost impossible to change. Like if you have got a certain kind of mortgage and you've got a certain kind of friend group and you have kids and you have this thing and you have all these financial responsibilities.

• 40:52Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it's just a lot harder. And it's not just your decision anymore at that point also.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. So it's really about baking in those impulses as soon as possible, really in your teenage years. And it'd be interesting to, to do some research on like, how do you cultivate that in a teenager to get rid of that fear?

• 41:09Jonathan Fields?

  That would be amazing, actually.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:11Jonathan Fields?

  It's interesting because you referenced also again sort of like the cross-country hitchhiking and also you're running towards this impulse in your case, which I think brings us to also my curiosity around the big walks. So at some point, years into your trajectory, you basically, you know, a guy named John McBride in Aussie, people may or may not know his name, kind of says to you, hey, let's go for a walk.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:36Jonathan Fields?

  But not just a short walk, you know, like, it's not like, hey, let's meet for a walk and have a little coffee and chat. And this starts like a season of these giant walks. Kind of take me into this a little bit.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, John invited me, I mean, John and I met through a mutual friend and John was involved with the art world. John has this like really Forrest Gumpian history, like he ran Sky TV, he launched Sky TV with Rupert Murdoch here in Japan. He was setting up airline routes for Anset, which was an Australian airline that doesn't exist anymore. But I think he opened like the Osaka Sydney route or something like that. So he just has, he had this really bizarre history and then he basically retired when he was like 45, let's say, because running Sky TV was so intense. And then he shifted into, because he is in his heart, like an academic, he shifted into the art world. And so he had

• 42:32Speaker 02

  been deeply engaged with Aboriginal art. I don't know if you remember about 20 years ago, there was kind of this world tour at all the major kind of modern art museums of contemporary Aboriginal art that was happening, these huge pieces by these kind of really old folks in the, you know, in the desert and stuff. And like John was kind of instrumental in doing that. And he supported all of these young artists, essentially buying lots of their work, collecting it and then doing donations. So he has like, he has, you know, collections at the British Museum and other museums around the world in order to give a platform to these younger artists. That's kind of, that was the purpose of his collecting and donating. And he learned this all from his mentor, who was a big gallery directory

• 43:12Speaker 02

  in Australia. So because he was doing all this art stuff, I had done an art book. And a friend was like, oh, you guys should meet. And we met and it was just like, we met for breakfast and we stood up at 5pm. You know, it was just like, we just like instant, like, you know, like mind meld. And it was fun. And then he just kind of, you know, he'd invite me on little things. We went to James Charles House of Light with a couple of Australian artists who were visiting. That was kind of interesting. And then I don't remember exactly why, but he had spent his late teens. He came to Japan when he was really young. He spent his late teens in Japan doing research, Japanese literary research on the road.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  So basically going, walking the Tokaido, walking the Nakasendo, walking the 88 temples, walking the Okinohosomichi in order to kind of understand the literature.

• 44:02Jonathan Fields?

  For those who also don't know any of those services, these are long, like walks. These are potentially hundreds of miles or kilometers.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like, they could be a thousand kilometers or, yeah, you know, 400 miles, 500 miles, things like that. So he had been doing that in his late teens, early twenties, and he kind of took a break from that. And then in his early 50s, late 40s, early 50s, he kind of came back to it. And just as he was coming back to it, we met and he was like, oh, hey, you should come, like, come to Koya-san with me. You know, I was like, what's that? It's funny, it's so easy to not, because history and culture can be really inaccessible, especially if you come from a place where there is no culture, there is no history. So you're not thinking about those things. And if you don't have someone to kind of go, hey, look, there's a door here, actually. You know, you've been standing next to this door for 20 years or at that point, like 13

• 44:54Speaker 02

  years, why don't you open this door? It's just been here since the day you arrived in Japan. It's like, what? Oh, yeah, I guess there is a door here. Let me open it. Oh, wow, there's historical walks and they bring you to incredible places and, you know, places like Koya-san that are just filled with this kind of power spot energy and incredible nature and history. And then the more you dig the language and just kind of quirkiness of, of culture, you know, like the monks up on Koya-san, which is like the, the center of Shingon Buddhism. You know, they're very bizarre people. You know, it's like one who's a famous race car driver, you know, it's just like, well, who, what, what is happening here?

• 45:33Speaker 02

  So he just kind of unlocked or just very gently opened the door that was always there that I could have always walked through at any moment. Like when I, instead of hitchhiking across from Tokyo to Fukuoka, if we had known there was a historical walk from Tokyo to Kyoto, oh, a hundred billion percent, we would have done that. But like, just didn't know that. There's no one talking about these things. There's no one exposing us to these things. Is it, so like, what's the poor man's version of doing a historical walk? You hitchhike because that's like all you know. So I think the physical challenge of the walk would have like totally lit our 20 year old minds on fire. I'm like, yeah, we're gonna go do that. So he just kind of opened that door for me and started inviting me and he had a kind of

• 46:15Speaker 02

  freedom because he, you know, he had done his work. He had compressed 60 years of work into 20 years from 24 to 44. And I had come back from my stint in California and I was back living in a shoebox. You know, my cost of living again, I'm 33, my cost of living is a thousand dollars a month. So I had this freedom to like, say yes to whenever he was going to do research. And we started researching together. We started walking together and it just kept going in a way that um felt intuitive and, and also just like an easy friendship. That's really what it boiled down to. You know, it's just funny because like people meet us and they're like, they're like, oh, are you a father and son? That's awesome. You know, he's 20 years old in a minute.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  And of course, that, that just pisses John off. You know, he's just like totally annoyed by that. Right. And then, and then we're like, no, actually we're not father or son. And then they're like, oh. It's like, oh, I see. You got the young lover, which we also just find hilarious because you couldn't have less sexual energy between two human beings, like two living creatures. Honestly, just an utterly effortless friendship.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  And I don't think there's anyone in the world that is easier for me to travel with than John. You know, and so if we're together for two weeks, 24 hours a day, sleeping in the same room, essentially, you know, it's like you get all these tatami rooms, you're just sleeping in a row. It takes zero energy for me. And in fact, it's, it feels mutually kind of like elevating and energy giving. I think that was also why we continued for so long is because that doing these walks together, just because it was so, it really was. For me at least, maybe for John, it was terrible and he was just totally losing his mind. He's like, oh my God, Craig is complaining about this thing again. Or he's, oh, you know, he's doing this or he wants to walk too fast or, you know, who knows?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  But for me, it was just pure joy, effortless, pure joy of this world, these doors being opened and more doors and more doors and more doors. And watching John move through the world as an archetype, the way he uses language, his kindness, his patience, his ability to manipulate people in the best possible way. So like to get into a shrine that you're not normally allowed to get into. Like watching him use language to finagle that, or just getting access to things that would otherwise be off limits. Or blowing people's minds to such a degree that they say, hey, I have this thing I've never shown anyone. Let me show you guys. And watching that all kind of unfold, completely reconfigured my brain in the best possible way.

• 48:47Jonathan Fields?

  And there's something so beautiful also about this, and so you're deepening into this literally like chosen family level friendship. And you're exploring the world together, you know, and you're deepening it and you also like, and there's a, there's a physicalization of it.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:03Jonathan Fields?

  You know, like you're literally moving through space the entire time that you're doing this. And it's, we rarely do things like that. Maybe we do it for a hot minute. Like I said, you know, I'm very fortunate. I live in Boulder, Colorado. Like nobody goes for a coffee here. We go for hikes. You know, so I'm out with friends all the time for a couple of hours in the mountains, just walking next to them, shoulder to shoulder. And developed astonishing friendships in a relatively short amount of time, just by doing that. And I can imagine like, what if you extend that to a week? What if you extend it to a month? What if you extend it to two months, like 30, 40, 50? Sixty days, you know, the full sweep of I'm sure emotions, physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual comfort and discomfort have to emerge and boredom. I have to imagine that's

• 49:48Jonathan Fields?

  a part of the experience also.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Well, boredom is when you're alone. When I'm with John, there's no boredom. It's just,

• 49:53Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Well, it could be with John, the, the one thing that can, it's not necessarily boredom. It's just information overload. I mean, John is certifiably, I would say genius level. You know, this is why he's running a company for Rupert Murdoch in the nineties. This is why, you know, he's setting these things up in his twenties as kind of a savant. But because of that, his notion of enough information is like 400 billion times more than

• 50:21Jonathan Fields?

  Right.

• 50:21Speaker 02

  a normal person. So

• 50:22Jonathan Fields?

  Completely different set point than the average mortal.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  The thing with John is like, sometimes I just have to walk away. He'll be, he'll talk with someone for literally an hour and a half more than I would talk with them. You know, it's like, it'd be five minutes would be enough for John. He's talking for two hours. He's taken notes on all this. I'm just like, this is, it's just overload. So that's the only point of boredom is when things like that happen. But it's, you know, it's, it's all coming from such a good place. And I think it's important to also note that hilariously, like my editor at Random House wrote me a note about something about one of the chapters, like a John chapter. And she's like, oh, it's so amazing. This fatherly figure, da, da, da, da. And I forwarded it to John and he was like, just mortified because he's like,

• 51:03Speaker 02

  we, there's no fatherly, there's no hierarchy present at all in the friendship. It is just, it's just a friendship. That's it. And there's something really nice about that. And yet, from the outside, everyone is constantly trying to like, you want to map it.

• 51:20Jonathan Fields?

  A hundred percent. So when you start going out on your own then, and when I use the word boredom, by the way, I wasn't using it as a negative, you know, because I would imagine when you start going out on your own and okay, so now you're taking these long walks on yourself and granted, you meet tons of like interesting characters and people and the places themselves become characters and this as you're walking. But I wonder also what the role of I'm literally out on the road, you know, and there are going to be long swaths of time where all I can do is look, like, listen, smell, and be with my mind. And how much of that is also a part of the experience of these long walks for you?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's ultimately the entire experience. That's the point is to get to those places to cultivate that, that kind of space of boredom in order to heighten attention, in order to heighten all the other senses. Because when you take away that stimulus of the phone, the internet, infinite amounts of information coming into your brain all the time.

• 52:17Jonathan Fields?

  And we should mention, by the way, when you do these generally, like, technology stays off for most of this.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  For most of it, yeah, it's, I kind of have these rules. So, yeah, I'd been doing all these things with John, and then I started tiptoeing my way out and doing things alone, just because there was more stuff I wanted to do and John would be like busy or wouldn't be in the country or something. So I started doing these things on my own and building up more and more confidence of being able to do them on my own. And once I started doing it on my own, I very quickly realized I wanted to, I needed a set of rules. And I'd actually done Vipassana, a 10 day Vipassana retreat at the same time I started doing a lot of these solo walks. And the Vipassana retreat was a 10 day, no, obviously no technology thing. And I think what was shocking about that was feeling the, my physiological addiction to information constantly entering my brain. I just wanted that so badly.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  And doing Vipassana showed me how to move beyond that and actually how present that really was. And so I kind of came out of that way more sensitive to how my phone was making me feel or how certain websites like Twitter made me feel. And I tried to cut as much of that back as possible. And so on the big walks, I had my rules of like, no social media, no news, no podcasts, no, no anything that allows you to teleport essentially. And you have to be fully present in the walk, in that moment, in the walk. When you do that, you really do open up these spaces in the mind. So when you, when you get rid of that inundation of information, which I think we're all suffering from for the most part, like, everyone listening to this right now is probably. Jogging and doing something else and like, you know, it's our, they're cooking while they're

• 53:51Speaker 02

  listening to this. It was like, you know, multiple levels of multitasking constantly going on. And I think what's great about walking as a physical act is it's really hard to do other things while you're doing it. It's like you can walk and chew gum, but you know, walking and looking at your phone is really stupid. And it's like both things are kind of suffering. And so while walking and getting rid of all that information, you just feel your mind open up. You feel these, those parts of your mind that were otherwise filled with essentially meaningless information. It's so much of the news that we consume, wait a week and get the summary of it because it's going to change anyway, especially now with the chaos of, of these news cycles. So the idea that everything has to be consumed in real time is sort of a contemporary pathology that we'd probably be better without. And when

• 54:36Speaker 02

  you start to get rid of those, those sort of inroads into your mind, yeah, that boredom thing kicks in, but what that boredom thing, that space of boredom allows for is just, at least for me, an incredible amount of writing. So I just find my mind immediately wants to write. It fills all of that stimulated space with words, sentences, paragraphs, thoughts, and desires to connect with people and desires to synthesize what they're saying. And it heightens my awareness for quirky things that they might say, strange things they might say that are unique to that person or of that moment. And I'm just way more receptive. It's like the antennas are, you know, just so much stronger for all of those things. And then also just like patterns in the world and looking for, like in Japan, all over

• 55:21Speaker 02

  the country, there are these hidden Christian signs that are sort of present all over the, it's very weird. There are these strange little black and yellow signs about Jesus' blood. I mean, it's like very much like you'd see driving around North Carolina. And it's like, why are these signs in Japanese all over the country, you know, on like little barns and stuff? And so it's noticing that and which otherwise you just pass by and you kind of never take a second look at. Or like the Kisaten, and it's like when I first walked the Nakasendo, which was from Tokyo to Kyoto, I didn't intend to eat pizza toast every day. I didn't intend to. Go to Kisaten, which are these mid-century Japanese-style kind of like diner cafes.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  But I'm walking, I don't have any stimulation and I'm hungry. And I start noticing that everything is shuttered except for barber shops in Kisaten. It's like, okay, this is another pattern to investigate. So it just, it gives your mind the space to engage fully with the world in a way that being plugged in doesn't. And the walk acts as kind of a forcing function for it all because it gives you purpose. I like walking, but for me, and I'm lucky in the sense that my body likes walking too. Like I can do 30, 40 K a day. I can carry a big pack. I was always really like self-conscious about my, my like very muscular butt. You know, as like, cause like pants like never fit me because my butt.

• 56:46Jonathan Fields?

  Now I finally understand why it's there.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Yes, it's like finally this butt has a purpose. It's like I could climb, you know, seven mountains a day with a 30 K pack. And you know, it's like, whatever, like my butt's like, yeah, give me more of this. So it's, it was just funny. So like, I'm lucky in that sense that, you know, I can walk for 40 days. And my body, for the most part is, is okay. But the walking itself is not the thing that I'm ensorcelled by. I'm not, I'm not seduced by walking. Walking as a physiological act opens up in the mind and makes it easy to say, I'm going to get rid of these other things. Because it, that point-to-point purpose lays a foundation of purpose for your day. I'm gonna, I have to get to this place. Okay, I'm going to get to that place. That's the work for today.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  And it makes it so much easier for me at least to say, okay, no social media, no news, no teleporting. And so that's really the power of the walk. And that's what I really love about the walk. And also biking, it's just too technical. It's like you have to think about gear and maintenance and okay, you got a flat, I can deal with that. With walking, it's just like, there's a purity to it and a simplicity. Just your feet, that's the only thing you really have to care about, like worry about your feet. Make sure they're okay. Make sure your knees are okay. That's about it.

• 57:59Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, I love that. And it sounds like for you, like, there's an attunement that happens when you're walking. It's like, especially like, without the technology out there, you're like, you're paying attention to the environment, to everything around you in a way that you wouldn't be if you were cycling, or if you had tech, or if you were hitchhiking, whatever it may be. And then, you know, like, when you get to a place at the end of the day, I know you've written about sort of like, oftentimes, the cycle that you have when you're on these longer walks, where you're out in the walk on there. And then, in the evening, you might sit down, then like, basically, collect your images and your thoughts, and maybe write for four or five hours that evening, you know, like, and do this day in, day out. I remember, I think it was probably Pizza Toast, that book, if I have it right, and tell me if I, if I don't, were basically, you were sharing in real time with a select group of people, but, and they could write back to you, but

• 58:44Jonathan Fields?

  it didn't get passed on to you until you finally returned, and you basically got everything all at once. Was that the book, or was it Kisa by Kisa?

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, the Kisa by Kisa is the book that came out of that walk. But as I was doing that first big walk, that was kind of members, I have a membership program, and it was sort of the first member funded walk. I kind of divined some permission from the members to do it. I built this really weird SMS messaging system, where I could message a little note and a photo every night, and then people could respond, but I didn't see the responses, and they were collected on a server. And then, ideally, we were gonna have it auto kind of layout this book, but that was too complicated. So I just gave the Excel file of responses to a designer and said, hey, can you lay out this book? Here's the templates. Don't show me the messages. And, and then he laid out the book, hit print

• 59:36Speaker 02

  on Blurb, got one book, it was waiting for me at home at the end of the walk. So just to, again, like, thinking about the tightness of contemporary communication, like, of these loops, these communication loops, like, until 40 years ago, with before email, it was like, you had, you wrote a letter, that was it. I mean, it's so crazy how recent that was, where that, you know, or you made a phone call. But if you really wanted to, like, sit with your thoughts, and like, send someone something considered, it was like, you wrote a letter. That took a couple of days, and then they took a couple of days, and they came back. So that loop was like, maybe a week long. Of communication and now all of our loops are on the the millisecond level. It's like people are watching in real time. There's red receipts, which I think are one of the worst things that we've ever self inflicted harm that we've ever done to ourselves.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  It's like putting red receipts on messages. Talk about like traumatizing teenagers. Like that's absolutely the worst thing we could have done in messaging apps. And so all these loops are just so stupid and tiny and knee jerk and reactive. And the expectations are that the responses are going to be immediate. And so when you can kind of subvert that, you just find people open up in a way that they don't say like normal email or normal social media. And so I got this book at the end of the big walk and it was just really mind blowing. Like kind of the stuff people were writing to me, just the intimacy of it because they knew I wasn't going to see it immediately. So I think that gave him a little bit of a permission to kind of dig emotionally more deeply.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  And then I went back and responded to those in essays over the course of like several months. So we were able to take what I was able to mix sharing how I felt in real time with kind of this older analog level of a communication loop in terms of timeframes. And then fold that back into doing newsletters that were then doing email essay responses to some of the questions that were posed in the book. So it ended up being this really kind of beautiful experiment that was, for me, extremely successful. Hammered home important it was to protect yourself from those loops, from the quickness of social media, to not to enable your mind to really luxuriate and sit in the boredom

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  spaces and what your attention is drawn to in in those moments of boredom. Because when the loops are tight, you're constantly getting pinged and there's always another dopamine ping hit waiting for you. And so say I was doing real time communication on the walks, a piece of my mind always thinking about, oh, has anyone responded? What I should look, maybe I should respond.

• 1:02:04Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. And like, how much would you miss? I mean, by not being there?

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you'd miss everything.

• 1:02:09Jonathan Fields?

  Right. It's like when I go to a concert, right? And I see everybody holding their cell phones up over their head. I'm wanting to sort of like capture the moment and get credit for it. And it's just like, I'm just like, what if you were just here?

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Jonathan Fields?

  Like, you're never gonna see that again. And you're just sending it out for social currency. So other people know that you were there. But like, you've just missed something that could have been just gorgeous.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Jonathan Fields?

  You know, and we do that all day, every day in our lives now. In everyday events and everyday interactions, you know, like with a barista or in like the great moments. It's just like we're partially there, but rarely ever fully there. And I'm always wondering, how much of our lives are we missing through this simple quirk of technology and behavior?

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  All of it. We're missing all of it. We really are. I mean, I get traumatized by people on Instagram who do like 20 to 50 stories a day. I still use Instagram because when I'm doing these big walks and people want to connect, it's actually a great way to connect with businesses out in the middle of nowhere or young people out in the middle of nowhere. And it kind of creates these threads back to those places that have paid really meaningful dividends over the years, just of staying connected or being able to call on for favors or something if I'm going back to the area. So for me, Instagram has that kind of value. So I open it every now and then to just take a peek. And I'm just shocked at these people who every day are doing 20, 30, 40 stories

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  and are, you just realize are so manipulated by the system itself. And some of these people are quote unquote artists or creators. And I want to kind of just shake them and go, okay, take a month off. You're not allowed to post any stories. You're only allowed to do your work. Just work on your work. Get the writing done. Go take photos without thinking about Instagram. It's like, sit in that space. Because I think it's easy to forget what life outside of that dopamine loop feels like. And I do think the art suffers. I think it is impossible to make great art. Which is art that is getting to certain kinds of truths or art that, you know,

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  is offering a new perspective on things when you're plugged into those systems. Because those systems are so, they're so anodyne. That's the thing that is so frustrating about it. It's like, no one has ever made great art in an Instagram story, ever. There's no one's ever like, you know, no one's seen an Instagram story and been like, this belongs in the MoMA. That will never happen because the system doesn't want that.

• 1:04:36Jonathan Fields?

  Although somebody may have taken a picture of something that's great art that's hanging in MoMA on the chair of Instagram. I so agree with that. Inferior, though. I mean, I think a lot of people, especially like people with an artistic impulse, people who are makers and artists, and like, they really want, actually, they want to make great art. They want to figure out what is my truth in this moment in time and figure out how can I express in a way that feels aligned with me. And, and at the same time, they bought into a mythology that says, you have got to spend a substantial chunk of your time out there, actually being sort of perpetually public. Because that's how you're going to get the work out. But we never look at the opportunity cost of that, right? And then we're always wondering, why do I always have to keep being here and here and here and here, over and over and over and over?

• 1:05:21Jonathan Fields?

  And never asking the question, is part of this because I'm taking a pretty substantial chunk of my bandwidth, my instinct, my tune, my attention, my creative expression, and allocating it towards that, rather than allocating it to the craft, so that I can create something so that when I do step into those platforms and those communities and those spaces, what I have to offer is now at that level that you're describing, where instead of people saying, oh, they're just like, oh, sweet, what? Oh, wow, I'm in tears. I need to actually tell everyone, bring everyone that I know here, and we want to participate in this. I think so often we don't think of the opportunity cost to the work itself when we're doing this.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  There's a huge opportunity cost. The community is so important to creative practice. It's so critical. And I think that the real move for young artists is to find ways to create community in physical space and create recurring community events, connections, meetups that can be completely divorced from social media stuff. And I think very quickly you realize the richness of that is 100 billion times greater than whatever phony kinds of connections you feel like you can make on Instagram stories. It's like Instagram stories aren't worthless. TikTok isn't worthless, but you have to, I think, be very careful of how you engage with that space, because that space wants you to just live there forever.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  That space is not, it's not your friend.

• 1:06:54Jonathan Fields?

  What am I saying no to by saying yes to this? I think we don't ask that question enough. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases.

• 1:07:37Jonathan Fields?

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• 1:07:53Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Vinted. So here's a question that I have been sitting with. How many things in your closet were bought for, let's say, a version of you who never quite showed up? Maybe it's the tailored jacket for the dinners you were gonna go to, or someday pieces with the tag still on them. They're lovely clothes. They're just not yours anymore. That's where Vinted comes in. So Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where everyday people sell the clothes that they're not wearing to people who actually will. Listening on Vinted is quick and simple. You take a few photos, write a short description, and you're done. Once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. There are also no seller fees on Vinted. So whatever your piece sells for, you keep.

• 1:08:35Jonathan Fields?

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• 1:09:20Jonathan Fields?

  That would be me, by the way. Ski and running socks for the ones who refuse to slow down. Also me, by the way. And water-resistant suede booties. So cushy. My executive producer, Lindsay, actually more or less lives in hers. And here's what else makes it a good life kind of gift. For every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased, one donated. Over 200 million donations and counting, so every gift you give is really two. So head over to bombas.com/goodlife and use the code GOODLIFE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash goodlife. Code GOODLIFE at checkout.

• 1:10:03Jonathan Fields?

  I want to dive into that notion of community a little bit more. You mentioned earlier, membership, people that are literally...

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, you built this fascinating model. Absolutely, I'm so fascinated by this. Where effectively, you have a community, although I'm actually curious whether you actually call them a community. You have a group of people who've raised their hands to say, like, what you're doing is interesting to me. It's cool to me. For some reason, I want to not only ride along with you and participate in the things that you're sharing and what you're experiencing, both in terms of whether it's a newsletter, or, you know, every couple of years, you know, like beautiful social objects that really distill it into things. They're not just saying, I want to participate in it. I want to live vicariously a little bit, but I also want to pay you so that you can go and do these things and then create these things. Take me into this model, because it's also not different, because you've also,

• 1:10:50Jonathan Fields?

  you know, you've incredibly generously written something like 40,000 words, basically, over a six-year window of having this paid model, explaining, like, this is what I did, this is what I learned, this is how to change it, this is the evolution of it. And not too long ago, published this sort of like, the rules of this, of the special projects that you do. And early on in that list, you say, let me be really clear here. This is about me making books.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Jonathan Fields?

  This isn't about me managing a community.

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:11:18Jonathan Fields?

  It's beautiful and also really contrarian.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  That's how you have to operate, if you want to be a quote-unquote artist, or, you know, kind of untethered creative person in the world. You have to be militant about protecting space for you to do your work. The membership program started in 2019, January 2019, and it just kind of came out of frustration with not being able to sell bigger articles to bigger magazines. And I had a whole set of writing I wanted to be doing, and I didn't know how to do it. In the sense of, I was never trained to be a long-form writer in magazines, or whatever. And like, I'd done all these writing residencies, but it was all kind of fiction. I was just having a really hard time selling these pieces. And I finally just hit this wall, and I was like, fine, I guess I'll do a membership program,

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  because it was right around when everything was kind of emerging. Substack was courting me like crazy back then. They really wanted me to join. But I don't like constricted spaces. And so like Patreon wasn't interesting to me. Like, I like feeling as a creative person unrestricted in, I love rules, but I love when they're my rules. I don't love it when some other ding dong is making the rules for me.

• 1:12:25Jonathan Fields?

  I love rules as long as I set them.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love them and I love setting them and I love, and I love sticking by them until I don't want to stick by them anymore. And then I'll make more rules. But so I ended up building my own system using Memberful to do payments and stuff like that. But it's, Memberful is very open. And back then it was even more bare bones. It was really just this kind of NPR style, like I'm literally giving you nothing. You've just been reading my work for, say, 12 years and want to support me. And I'm gonna just try to be more radically independent now. That was kind of the pitch. And so it started with that. And then, like I said, my first big walk from that was the Nocasendo Walk. And that really unlocked the sense of power that a community supporting you financially can bring to your work.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  The kind of permission that comes from that. And I'd say that was, that's been the biggest thing I've divined from this community is permission. And that first year, I didn't have a cohesive manifesto. I didn't have rules, really. I just wasn't gonna make anything. I knew that from the beginning. I didn't want to make things just for the community because I didn't want to get caught in this catch 22 of like, you're doing a community to make your work, but you end up making work for the community. And so you don't do the work you want to do in the beginning. Like, that's what you want to avoid. And then that second year, 2020, when COVID hit, it put the brakes on like me traveling anywhere. I was like, okay, well, let me do a book. Because that one-off book I did with the responses from everyone was so powerful to me.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  And it reminded me, because in my twenties, I'd been making books, beautiful books. That's how I connected with John. And then my thirties, I sort of stepped away from books a bit. I was kind of focused more on my own craft. I didn't want excuses to not be writing. And so I was spending all of my time doing residencies and, and just living in my, my craft. And I was like, well, maybe, yeah, you know, I do love, love, love books. And I want to, like, what if I went back and on my own, entirely independently, on my own. Because in my twenties, I had a kind of a business partner and we were running, you know, this publishing company. And I was like, what if I did this completely on my own, where it's just me? And we really went crazy because it's COVID. We can't do anything anyway. Like, just try to make a really beautiful book.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  And I leaned into that. And then that book priced at a hundred bucks, I thought, based on my history in publishing, I was like, okay, this will take me a couple of years to sell a thousand of these. And I wanted to be able to offer a discount, a coupon to members in the membership program. I was like, oh, okay, this will be the first like, membership perk.

• 1:14:56Jonathan Fields?

  Beyond just like patronage, thank you for like, doing what you're doing.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Yes. It's like, this is like, gonna be the first tote bag, the first NPR tote bag. And I was like, okay, I want to offer a discount to members, especially yearly members who are paying me a hundred bucks a year. I want to give them a discount. And I looked at Kickstarter and like, you couldn't do, you couldn't do coupons with Kickstarter. And I was like, this is bullshit. I looked at Shopify for the first time ever in my life. And I wish I looked at it earlier because I was bought Shopify stock so much sooner. Like, it's just such a good product. I was blown away by how freaking good Shopify was. And I was able to build, this is pre LLMs, pre like, code helpers. I was able to build a Kickstarter clone called Craigstarter in Shopify over the course of like, a week. I was like, okay, this is cool. And I could do coupons and da,

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  da, da. And so I launched that and it was just bananas. The, we sold out in two days, a thousand copies of that first edition, which I was just like, wow, I didn't think that was gonna happen. And so many people joined the membership program to get that discount. And I just realized there was this incredible potential for even deeper symbiosis between me wanting to produce this work, which to me felt like just the apotheosis of giving shape to what I was doing. And then people wanting to support that and support me as a patron and get a little kickback with the discount. Like, that was just, whoa, okay, that was not planned. And then in that moment, it was like, everything reconfigured itself. And I was like, okay, this is what we're doing for the next 20 years.

• 1:16:26Jonathan Fields?

  When you say a book, by the way, you know, like, because people heard you say a hundred dollars for a book, like, wait, what? We're talking about a book that is a beautiful, like, literally, it's a work of art. It's a, it's a very small, limited run. So it's, this is like a limited edition, like, piece of art. You know, like, this is something that's extraordinary. That said, and you having a really strong, like, as you used that word earlier in the conversation, uncompromising aesthetic. When you're like, okay, I'm gonna put this first thing out into the world. The typical book is like, you know, the actual price is 26 bucks, but people end up paying like 15 to 20 bucks. I'm charging a hundred dollars for this. And yes, it's a special book and it's beautiful and it's handmade. And nervous about that at all? Were you freaked out about it at all? Or were you just like, this is, this is what this is worth?

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  No, because, so I taught at Yale for 10 years in the Yale Publishing Course. So every summer I'd fly out and I'd do usually the keynote lecture, but I had office hours. And basically publishers from all around the world would come to New Haven. It was like usually the CEOs of all these publishing companies. And so there'd be this room of 50 to 100 publishing CEOs. And we would just spend a week totally geeking out on publishing. And I did this other book, Koya Bound, which was in 2016. And I was just about to launch some campaign and I was giving my keynote and I was talking about the book. And I kind of did an informal poll of all the CEOs in the room. I was like, what do you think this should cost?

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  And they're like, a hundred bucks. I was like, really? And everyone was like, are you kidding me? Yeah, absolutely. A hundred bucks. And I was like, yeah, because in my twenties, we were doing super beautiful books and we were charging. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was, but it was more like 40 or 50 dollars a book. And that kind of felt like the upper limit to us. And we were working with Ingram to do national distribution in the States. And they hate books that are more than like 30 dollars. I had experience with higher priced books, but it was because of the lack of teaching in that program and having access to all these essentially mentor like figures or people with a lot of experience. And them saying like, oh yeah, just a hundred bucks, obviously. And I launched that book, Koya Bound, at a hundred bucks and it sold really well.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, okay, there's a market for this. So there was no fear at all. But like I said, I was like, oh yeah, we'll sell out of this. It'll just take a year or two. I had no worries about that at all. The fact that it happened in two days was just really wild.

• 1:18:48Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, kind of mind blowing. It's like a huge signal that says yes.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a huge signal and I kind of had to walk back. I had to walk back my like, oh, this is gonna be a super duper duper limited edition. So but the only, because it was just, it was just like, this is-

• 1:19:01Jonathan Fields?

  This is one more printing and then- Maybe one more.

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it was just, it was dumb to leave that much market interest on that. It was stupid.

• 1:19:10Jonathan Fields?

  Especially if people want it.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and obviously I need, I should fulfill this need because this money is just gonna be plowed back into doing more of this work. And so like, who could, you know, you go, oh, God, am I being disingenuous? Am I not, you know, did I lie to the first edition people? And it's like, no, I mean, first editions are stamped and signed and none of the others are signed. So it's like, there is something really special about it. Hilariously, it just got better and better. So the second edition was just a clone of the first edition without signing because we were just like trying to like, speedrun it. It was like, oh, my God, I want to meet, if I can capture a hundred thousand dollars in interest, market interest, that for me is, you know, for someone who is living at a thousand dollar a month cost of living, that's, you know.

• 1:19:55Jonathan Fields?

  That's vague.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  That's huge. So, yeah, so like, please, like, let me get that locked in because that just gives me more, more creative freedom. And then, but by edition three, four, five, it just keeps getting better and better. So the people who bought the first edition have the rarest, probably most, I don't know, second market, highest sellable copy, but in terms of print quality, construction, binding, it's the lowest quality by far. So it's only gotten better. I don't feel bad about that because it's like, you want things to get better, but it is this hilarious irony of, of being early.

• 1:20:32Jonathan Fields?

  In no small part, though, it's also like, sure, they're buying the boat, they're buying the social object, but there's also something else going to, brings me to actually, like, one other really big curiosity around. So the membership is called Special Projects, the paid membership. It's now, you know, like, thousands of people participate in this. And as you mentioned, yes, when you come out with a book or a print or whatever may be coming a couple of times a year, they get a pretty meaningful discount when they purchase it. Outside of that, you've had to have sort of like, really thought about this, what are people actually paying you for?

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the discount is a big part of it. I think that the, it's so dumb, the psychology. We are such, such basic creatures. Like when you boil it down, it, we're so stupid because it's like people land on the book page and they're like, oh, I could pay a hundred bucks for this book, or I could pay $200 and get a $40 discount, you know, coupon. Yeah, that, that makes sense. Like, I love that. And I get to support this guy. And like, it's like, for some reason, that is an attractive option for a lot of people. Like the, the sense of supporting. Now they're getting into, you know, in those first couple of years, they were getting nothing extra. It was just a discount. That was it. And then

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  over the years, I've just built up this corpus of stuff.

• 1:21:50Jonathan Fields?

  You have a stunning like set of archives of, you know, like print, a video of just like so much stuff in there now for somebody who really wants to dip into it.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when I give my board meetings, so every six months I do a members only board meeting, which again is just for me. Everything is just for me. Everything is totally selfish. Everything, and I think if you run a membership program, it should be pathologically selfish. Like you should be doing nothing for members and just say that right from the beginning. And it's okay to do that. It's like, just tell everyone, hey, I'm, none of this is for you. It's entirely for me and for my work and you joining enables that. Like as long as you message that, you know, you're not being a ding dong. And so I do the board meetings because it just helps me remember what I've done, worked on. It helps me plan the rest of the year. It helps give context. And then the Q and As are really helpful too, like from members. So I do it, you

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  know, and I, I use a big weird stack of technology, but I find just YouTube, unlisted YouTube videos and doing them live. People can just put questions in the comments. Works super well. And those questions too are really clarifying for me. And doing those questions and responding to them, we're creating this archive of now hundreds of questions that people have asked me over the last four years or so. I think that's probably about how many years of archives we have of, of the board meetings. Almost any question you could have about me doing this is answered in that archive. So that's so powerful as an educational resource. And so that, as a member of the program, you get access to that.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  So it's a hundred, over 120 hours of video now. But that video, again, like I never sat down and was like, oh, I gotta do another member only video. Let me do this. It was always about, okay, this is gonna make me do this book better. This is gonna make me edit this stuff faster. This is gonna make me think more clearly about the rest of the year. So it's all selfish, but with this nice residual bonus benefit of, hey, oh, yeah. We create this corpus of Q and A that I think if I was 20, I mean, I would be in heaven having access to something like this, thinking about my practice, thinking about what I want to do.

• 1:23:57Jonathan Fields?

  And also, it's like you're going out into the world, living a very engaged, interesting life. You're going on journeys. You are really immersing yourself and participating and learning, experiencing. And yes, you bring people along on the freely available newsletters, but this takes them into a much richer, deeper experience of what's happening with you and also the making experience. And like, it's a much, a much deeper, full spectrum experience. And I think a lot of people are just, they're locked into whatever their day to day is in a way where when they see somebody like you saying, yes, like this, I'm uncompromising in the way that I wanna live my life. I'm going out into the world and doing this thing. I'm capturing it.

• 1:24:39Jonathan Fields?

  I'm reporting from the front lines of actually being fully engaged in life with like the outside world. And then I'm reporting back to you in beautiful and compelling ways. I wonder if part of what's going on there is that so many people are not getting that in their lives right now with the way that they're living, the choices that they've made. And no shame or blame here, like we all make our own choices, that when they have an opportunity to get a hit of that by experiencing what you're doing, it's sort of like, okay, if this is what I have available to me at this moment in time, like, you know, for a modest investment, this is helping me feel better.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's the hope. And it's also why I have students get access for free.

• 1:25:20Jonathan Fields?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  If you're a student, and my definition of student is like extremely broad. If you think you're a student, you're a student. That's fine. Just send me an email and say, I think I'm a student. Great.

• 1:25:31Jonathan Fields?

  A student of life.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  You don't have to send me, don't send me your ID, don't send me your LinkedIn profile showing you go to George Washington University or whatever.

• 1:25:38Jonathan Fields?

  It's my credit report.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's like, I'm not that precious about this stuff. And the reason for the student discount free thing is, I think, the most important time to make, start making these decisions about the kind of person you want to be and how you want to live is in your teenage years. I feel like the biggest impact this can have is if I can speak to people who are 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, like that age group, especially maybe kids who are just about to graduate undergrad, who are thinking about who they want to be, what kind of jobs they want to take, what they want to explore, what they want to kind of commit to. That's 1 trillion percent position that's going to have the biggest impact of getting exposure to the Q and As, the board meetings, stuff like that. And so I want to make sure that's maximized.

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  The people who want it, who, for whom the impact will be biggest, have the maximal amount of access. That's great. And so everyone else is kind of subsidizing the ability to offer these kind of student discounts. And they also, that also allows the students to get discounts on the books, because I want them to also be able to buy the objects, but they're really prohibitively expensive. And so if I can give them that discount as well, maybe it makes it a little more accessible, even though they're still, they're still expensive even after the discount. So that's kind of how I think about it.

• 1:26:52Jonathan Fields?

  And it also shows them, like, I think by actually showing them, okay, so I can make something that is not ephemeral. I can make something that is beautiful and enduring. And then expect the world, or at least enough people, to say like, this feels good to me, this matters to me. And that when they're thinking about maybe the choices that they're making, even if it costs them a little bit more and they have to dig a little bit more to actually get their copy of this thing than they might pay for, you know, like a book in a large scale retailer. It's like that process gives them the lived experience. Experience of saying, oh, you can do this. And I'm, I'm proof that like, somebody actually wants this to exist. At a very early point in life, most of us never get that signal.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Jonathan Fields?

  Which kind of brings us also, and I wanna, um, you know, to, to the newest book, you know, Things Become Other Things. This is something that you publish yourself.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:44Jonathan Fields?

  It's a really interesting and kind of different book, you know, because yes, it's grounded in another big walk. So there are a lot of similarities in terms of the walking process and the characters that you meet and the locations and the places. But there's this other thread that we use through the whole thing, which is it's, it's this letter, almost a tribute to a childhood friend. And you're, the whole book is, you're not saying, dear reader, you know, like you're saying, dear Brian.

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. The genesis of that walk was in COVID, walking the Kihei Peninsula, which is kind of the peninsula south of Kyoto. Mie, Wakayama, Nara, prefectures kind of compose it. And, um, just going to do during really the kind of height of COVID and uncertainty. This 30 day walk of that peninsula and really explore and be offline and run. But I'm writing every day, you know, I'm walking eight hours and then writing four or five hours every night. And the book kind of came out of that process. And the stillness of COVID and the kind of stillness and emptiness of the peninsula

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  just made me reflect on that childhood friendship, you know, which is sort of like a tragic story. And it was one that, like I said, I wrote a, the first short story I ever wrote was about Brian, kind of inspired by House on Mango Street. And that won an award, got published. And then I spent years trying to write about Brian again. I just couldn't. I like, just didn't know how to do it. And I didn't have the, um, the work ethic either. I didn't really know what truly doing the work of writing a book looked like or felt like. So on this walk, I mean, I just started reflecting more and more on him and our friendship and what was lost. The peninsula itself is quite poor. So socioeconomically, the peninsula

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  and where I come from are quite aligned, but the peninsula lacks the violence, the drugs, the, I don't know, just like that lack of social safety net, that lack of mired brokenness that I think so much of where I came from is typified by. So much of contemporary America, I think a lot of people come from a lot of places that are typified by that kind of brokenness. And why this place could exist socioeconomically in a parallel world, but without all these other things. It was like kind of this mirror, this strange mirror that like took away a lot of the violence, a lot of the badness. And just thinking about what would the child have been like here as opposed to there? And what would we have

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  done? What would we have gotten in trouble with? What kind of stupid stuff would we have done? How would we have thought about life and ourselves growing up in this environment versus where we were? And so just that kind of exercise started drawing Brian out more and more. And he became the focus of the book, kind of unwittingly. And then I, you know, I have my fine art edition and the Random House edition is very different. It's almost, I would say, a new book in kind of an exciting way. Cause like my, my fine art edition is sort of the most pared back minimalist version where it's sort of the Craig Mod cinematic universe version where it's like, you're already following me. You know, my story.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  You've been reading my work for a decade or whatever. And then like you buy this book. So I don't have to explain too much. And then the Random House version was like, okay, what if no one had ever heard of me before, read any of my work? What does that look like? And actually as an exercise, it was really generative and I think just so positive. And also in the fine art edition, I was really struggling with Brian being such a present central figure. And in the writing process, he kind of like snuck his way in. And so in the fine art edition, I turned towards him about three quarters of the way through the book. You know, so you're reading, reading, reading. He's kind of this background presence. You're sort of like, who is this guy? And I finally turned towards him and then the last quarter of the book is like basically a letter to Brian.

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  And I always got a really incredible energy from that last section of the book, you know? And there's folks like Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, you know, like Stephen King on writing. And they always, you know, their advice is always like, if you have a ace up your sleeve, don't ever hold it. Just play it immediately. Always be playing, always be playing it.

• 1:32:03Jonathan Fields?

  Right. Don't bury the lead until the last quarter of the book.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so kind of going back to the Random House edition, I was like, this turning towards Brian is so powerful. What if we just started the book with it? And then that allowed all these other things to happen. Like John was in drafts of the fine art edition, but because Brian was like, we wanted the focus to be on Brian. And he was kind of sneaking his way in. We ended up cutting John, cutting all these other people. And then because now the Random House edition is from page one, Brian, hey, this is a letter to you. He's so omnipresent. He's such a force in the book that he doesn't get diluted by having other, other characters. And so John now is a big presence in the Random House book.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  And just more of these Asamudra-san and, you know, just these other people that I had to take out. But now it can be there because everything is sort of being told to Brian. So it's no longer John competing with Brian. It's saying, Brian, there's this guy, John, he's fucking cool. And like, this is really interesting. What if we had one person like this in our lives when we were growing up? And we didn't, we didn't have anyone who was operating on this, this level. What if we had just had one person? What would have changed? And that's kind of the thrust of the literary conceit of the whole book.

• 1:33:21Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it's really powerful. You know, it's like you're, you realize immediately that you're not writing to me, the reader. And yet I'm so deeply compelled by the story. And also, I don't know who Brian is in the beginning.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:34Jonathan Fields?

  And it really, it unfolds slowly.

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Jonathan Fields?

  You know, really, it takes time for me to understand, like, oh, so it's almost like the power behind the story built throughout, like, the more you realize the depth of the relationship. And also, you know, like, some of the sadness that eventually emerges from it.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Jonathan Fields?

  I'm curious what it was like, sort of like, being in the middle of pandemic, walking alone. And I guess, when you were, Brian is a huge part of this. When you were actually doing the walking, was he on your mind also? Or was this something that really wove into the telling later?

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  He's been on my mind for almost 30 years. And I think I was kind of repressing a lot of it because I didn't know how to think about that friendship that was lost. And, you know, this core friendship of childhood, like essentially brother. So he's always been there and he's been present every walk. When I see kids and stuff, you know, he'd always pop up. But it was this, you know, this COVID walk in particular, where I just think we're in a moment where I think we were receptive to revisiting kind of the purpose of being alive, you know, or like what we're doing on this earth or why we're here. And I think that catalyzed more of the Brian. When I was writing the newsletters, he wasn't popping up, but he was

• 1:34:52Speaker 02

  hyper-present in mind. And then when I started writing my draft of the fine art edition, he started appearing more and more. And I felt like, okay, maybe we revisit that. And then my editor, Ali Chance, was reading early drafts and he was like, dude, this has to be a book about Brian. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, this is what the book has to be. So he gave me permission to go back there in a way that I think I was afraid to do on my own. So that was really great. And then the Random House edition was just, in a weird way, doing my fine art edition, allowed me to have what I consider like the apotheosis, like the best version of this book, the kind of uncompromising director's cut minimalist

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  version, fine art edition, beautifully made, blah, all that crap. So when I, when we went to the Random House edit. And rewrites and additions and all that stuff like the tension had like kind of left my shoulders. And I was able to just approach it with a far more like relaxed and open heart, I feel like, because it wasn't this. The performance anxiety was gone. The performance was done. I'd gotten tons of feedback. People really liked it. It was like, great. Okay, we did that. Now let's return to this and not be not be worried about how the dance is going to go. It's like, we, you know, we could do the dance. We did the dance. And that was really important, I think, to getting to this Random House Edition, which I'm proud of on so many different levels.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  But being able to reframe it all around Brian and having it be this letter to Brian, essentially, and writing to Brian, not the reader. But Brian, you know, Brian's a little kid. And so, you know, the reader gets a lot of information. It allows me to talk about history. It allows me to talk about me, about my history in a way that feels also less indulgent than if it was to the reader. Because it's like, hey, dude, we haven't spoken in 40 years. Like, I gotta catch you up. Here's what I'm doing. It's very weird. I went on a walk with Jeff Bezos. That's super fucking weird. Like, you know, it's like, I could say these things because it's to Brian. Whereas I think it could feel a little, a little more annoying if it was just like, dear reader, this is what I'm doing in my life.

• 1:36:54Jonathan Fields?

  It's such an interesting sort of like literary mechanism to be able to leverage. But at the same time, it doesn't feel like you're just leveraging a literary mechanism. It feels like you're actually speaking to somebody and like, I would love it. It's like, Brian, I really want you to know this. Like, I'm like, I want to share this with you. And at the same time, you are able to draw so much of your history of like, who you are, where you came from, why you are the way you are, what you believe, how you see the world from this shared conversation and references that we don't have as the reader. But eventually we do and it gets built in a way that just keeps you leaning in. And I just find it really compelling, you know, as a writer also, I'm just like, this is fascinating. At first, I just wanted to be in the book because it's immersive and beautiful and great storytelling.

• 1:37:38Jonathan Fields?

  And then I was like, as a writer, I'm like, this is so interesting what you're doing. Like from a writing context with the book, but that's not what jumped out. Like first is just a beautiful immersive read that takes me along a journey. You know, like through a countryside and through a country that I know almost nothing about. And also brings me into just a deeply moving personal story. I found it like really compelling.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Just one little interjection there. I recorded the audio book three or four days ago. It took 15 hours. It was, it was like waterboarding your brain. I don't know if you've ever recorded an audio book.

• 1:38:13Jonathan Fields?

  I've done a couple of my books and people are like, it must've been amazing. You're on your living with your voice. I'm like, I don't know why I could not wait to get out of the booth.

• 1:38:21Speaker 02

  It's so hard anyway, but it ended up being a pretty profoundly weird experience because the book is this letter to Brian. And so I was reading out loud, talking to Brian.

• 1:38:34Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  You know, in this booth and like the second, you know, the last third of the book is pretty emotional to go to those places. Because it isn't that, you know, epistolary form. It was really just a weird, weird surreal experience to be the kind of like, almost like yelling to Brian in this booth.

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Anyway, it was, it was bizarre. I hope, I hope it turned out okay. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just trying to like be as present as possible, but God bless audiobook professionals. That is some hard, hard work.

• 1:39:07Jonathan Fields?

  That's great. I'm picturing you in like this booth right now, sort of like having this deeply emotional experience, speaking out loud. And then like the, the editor coming in your ear and saying, you need to put a pillow over your belly. I'm hearing your stomach sounds.

• 1:39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, I mean, I'm like, well, it's like the last line in the book is like this like crazy, super heightened line. And, you know, you read it and then, yeah, the, I've got the director in my ear and he's like, why don't we do the last two sentences? It's like the last two sentences. How do I just get into the, like, how is that going to work anyway?

• 1:39:37Jonathan Fields?

  It's like, we only have 12 more takes and then we should be pretty good.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  And now I have more empathy for actors who like work with people like Fincher, who want like 60 takes on like stupid stuff. And are like, you know, little things and yeah, God, what a draining thing every day. So you kind of, I also have, I have more empathy for actors who kind of like go crazy on set. If like a sound person is in the shot, or if something like goes wrong, you know, it's like, I can totally see snapping. Because getting to those emotional, those places emotionally is so, so exhausting. So if you've done four, five, six, 10 times, some little thing on the, on the side kind of gets in the way. I could see you just going like, rah, you know, Christian Bale, I think on the set of Terminator went crazy.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  But I was like, oh, okay, I get that now. It's tough.

• 1:40:27Jonathan Fields?

  Well, I just so enjoyed diving into just so many aspects of who you are and how you sort of like built your life and your living. And this just beautiful aesthetic that is, is, as you said, uncompromising. Like you are so just completely dedicated to like, this is the thing. This is what I'm doing and I invite people to come along on this ride. And these are the rules too. And these are kind of like my rules. And then I get to actually put into the world, the thing that feels truest to me. And I love being able to share your story because it's an example of what's possible. I think to a lot of people who don't believe that this way of living and working and creating is possible anymore.

• 1:41:10Jonathan Fields?

  And it kind of opens the door and says to someone, huh. Look, you may do this very differently, but maybe just start to get curious about like what your version of something like this is. If you have that impulse inside of you and you've been keeping it at bay or believing that this just could never be a part of who I am or the way that I step into my life. So it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversations. They always wrap with the same question, which is in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  Fullness of days. I think that's kind of where I've landed. How do I just maximize? And not in like an optimization way, not in like some kind of cold calculated way. But just how do I maximize the number of days that at the end of the day I slide into bed? And I am just totally used up in the, but used up by the best possible things. And I just feel a fullness that I could not have played the cards that were dealt to me that day any better. I'm purposely vague about it because that sense of fullness can come from so many different things. So when I'm on a walk, it's about the physical act of the walking, the saying hello to all these new people.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  Meeting, hearing their stories, getting to the inn or the hotel at the night and spending the four or five hours writing, editing, reflecting on the day. That is its own kind of fullness. And then there's obviously fullness of family and spending a day with my stepdaughter, bringing her to, you know, New Zealand to go to school or whatever. And like, those are big days where I'm not doing anything that looks like work. But at the end of the day, I'm getting in bed and going, wow, okay, couldn't have done more with that day. And so I think if you keep that sort of compass point on the horizon of like fullness, a full day. And the difficulty is that you need to build up an archetype of what a full day looks like and what that feels like.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  And I think for a lot of people, you haven't experienced a full day. And I think you can kind of say what aren't full days as a way to try to get to what our full days are. I think a full, you know, swiping on TikTok for four hours is automatically means that cannot be a full day. So anytime your agency is taken away in service to some kind of capitalistic or corporate hunger. I think you are immediately removing full dainess from things. And so it's interesting, like playing video games, I think you can have a rich full day of playing video games. But it has to be the right kind of video games. So for example, Zelda, during COVID, one of my things was to play Zelda with my daughter. And, uh, and then I, she wasn't that good and I made.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  Another account on the Switch to just keep playing on my own. And so Zelda is a great example of a game that is not trying to take away from you. It's like you buy it once, you own it, it's not a casino, it's not a jackpot machine. You build up skills inside the game of how to play it, how to use it. And there is a concrete kind of completion zone, whereas something like Candy Crush is just pure casino. Right? And so like, can you have a full day having played Zelda? Sure, you can do like 10 hours of Zelda and like, be like, oh my God, I went on this amazing adventure in Hyrule. But if you do 10 hours of Clash of Clans, absolutely not.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  You've just thrown that away. You've burned that day in service to actors with malevolence towards you as a, as a user. Nintendo is one of these great companies that I think does respect, for the most part, its customers in a way that's pretty rare today. And it's, it's pretty inspiring. And so Nintendo doing well is always a heartening thing to see. So when I say that, the good life is a life of full days. It can take many, many different forms. And if you were to start to nudge yourself in a direction of like, how does that feel? I'd say getting your phone out of your bedroom is like step number one to putting yourself in the, in the realm of possibility of having a full day. And then try keep getting your phone out of your room and then also getting your phone out of sight in the morning and away from you until lunch.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  And just feel a morning without the phone, feel a morning without immediately going into the news or like seeing, you know, what, what gas is happening or whatever. And just sit with a quote unquote boring morning of creative time. So what do you want? Do you want to paint? Do you want to draw? Do something physical, do something analog. And I think if you, if you did a week of no phone in the room, the phone is like under the sink or whatever in the morning. So you don't even look in its direction and you don't touch it till noon. You get up at, you know, whenever you get up, seven, eight, nine, six, five, if you can, whatever. And you just say, okay, this is going to be a morning of just pure analogness where I'm allowed to read physical books. I'm allowed to draw, I'm allowed to write in a notebook and that's it.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  If you did that every day for a week, you would. Come out with such a different sense of what quietude feels like, what focus feels like, what attention feels like. And that would put you on, I think, a really great path towards building fuller and fuller days. So that would be my actionable advice.

• 1:46:18Jonathan Fields?

  You've just left me with my next experiment.

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  Nice. Awesome.

• 1:46:21Jonathan Fields?

  It's coming. Thank you so much, Craig.

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:46:25Jonathan Fields?

  Hey, if you love this episode, safe bet, you'll also love the conversation we had with Seth Godin about challenging conventional paths and thinking differently as an artist or entrepreneur. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube, too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome, too. But just one person even, then invite them

• 1:47:10Jonathan Fields?

  to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:47:31Jonathan Fields?

  Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Are you on track for financial independence? If you're on track, the same way you're getting back to the gym, as in, maybe next year, then this one's for you. NerdWallet Wealth Partners offers free tools for high earners who'd like an actual answer instead of a vibe, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals. Think of it as a fitness test that you can take sitting down. Or their wealth building checklist for high earners. It's a step by step guide for prioritizing your dollars once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s. Good news, this is One workout you can actually finish.

• 1:48:15Jonathan Fields?

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• 1:48:36Speaker 03

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