I realize I’m not the average man.
Then again, does the average man actually exist?
Whatever the answer is, I know I’m not him.
Case in point, by the end of 2026, I’ll publish my fifth individual book in as many years. I’ve written for publications all over the world—including the Good Men Project for more than a decade. I’ve interviewed some of my heroes. I co-host one podcast and host another. And during the day, I help people sleep well.
Wait…maybe that sounded a little weird.
I sell sleep.
Wait…
I work at a mattress store, okay? Stop looking at me like that.
All kidding aside, there are many things I do with a high comfort level.
Writing.
Podcasting.
Talking to complete strangers about why side sleepers should at least try a hybrid mattress even though you’ve been sleeping on a coil mattress for fifty years because that’s the only thing you know.
None of those things feel particularly intimidating anymore.
But they all used to.
There was a time when I had absolutely no idea how to write a book.
There was a time when hitting “publish” on an article felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.
There was a time when I walked onto a mattress showroom floor convinced everyone would figure out I had no idea what I was doing.
Here’s the funny thing.
Nobody ever told me I had to be good immediately.
I just…kept showing up.
Comfort wasn’t where I started.
Comfort was what eventually showed up after enough repetitions.
Case in point, a few years ago I found myself standing in a lecture room across the street from Madison Square Garden.
About 250 people.
Most of them complete strangers.
I answered a call to speak during this class. What I ended up saying wasn’t planned. I simply stood up, took a deep breath, and spoke from the heart.
It was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life.
It’s also one of the moments I’m proudest of.
The following spring, because I enjoy making myself uncomfortable apparently, I signed up for a six-week improv class in White Plains, New York.
Didn’t know a soul when I walked in.
I think in class three or four, our instructor handed us script pages from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Then she passed around a hat filled with slips of paper, each with the name of an animal.
The assignment?
Perform the scene as whatever animal you pulled.
I reached into the hat.
Snake.
Of course I got snake.
So there I am—a grown man—on the floor, slithering across the room while hissing Gene Wilder’s iconic “You get nothing! You lose!” speech, while giving one of my classmates a jump scare.
I look at the pictures taken that day of me doing that and I wonder, what in the hell was I doing?
Comfortable?
Not even close.
Ridiculous?
Completely.
Worth it?
Without question.
So explain something to me.
Rhetorically…
How can I stand in front of hundreds of strangers and speak from the heart?
How can I slither across the floor pretending to be a snake?
How can I write books that inspire and entertain strangers?
How can I write about men’s mental health and my own mental health with such vulnerability?
Yet somehow…
I’m finding myself completely clueless over having coffee with a woman I’d simply like to get to know better.
Yeah.
I know.
I buried the lede.
Understand this: coffee isn’t what I’m afraid of.
Being a beginner is.
Every other thing I’m comfortable doing today started exactly the same way.
The first article.
The first podcast.
The first customer.
The first speech.
The first improv class.
None of those moments felt natural.
None of them felt comfortable.
I was simply allowed to be new.
Somewhere along the way, though, I quietly created a different rule for relationships.
Somehow this is supposed to be different.
Somehow I’m supposed to know exactly what to say.
Exactly how to act.
Exactly how this whole thing works.
Why?
Seriously…
Why?
I don’t expect somebody to pick up a Stratocaster and immediately play Eruption.
I don’t expect someone to buy a notebook on Monday and write The Old Man and the Sea by Friday.
One of my favorite stories involves Gregg Allman.
According to the story, Gregg walked into one of the first rehearsals of the Allman Brothers Band carrying something like twenty songs he’d written.
Eighteen were rejected.
History remembers Dreams and Whipping Post.
The same thing is true for Eddie Van Halen.
We hear Eruption and think genius.
We think “how in the hell did he do that?”
Eddie heard scales.
Wrong notes.
Hours in his bedroom.
Bloody fingertips after countless repetitions.
We celebrate the finished product.
The artist lived through the process.
Writing has taught me that lesson repeatedly.
I’ve probably written tens of thousands of pages in my career.
Probably more.
If I’m being generous, one percent of those pages has ever been read by another human being.
The other ninety-nine percent?
Practice.
False starts.
Terrible ideas.
Entire chapters that deserved to be deleted.
Paragraphs that sounded brilliant at midnight and completely ridiculous the next morning.
Concepts that landed like a lead balloon in one manuscript, but three books later hit like an emotional sledgehammer.
Nobody sees those pages.
They only see the finished book.
Maybe that’s what’s happening here.
Maybe I’ve been expecting myself to skip the rough drafts.
Maybe I’ve convinced myself that if I feel awkward, uncertain, or nervous, then I’m somehow failing.
But that’s never been true anywhere else in my life.
I just kept showing up.
Eventually…
Comfort caught up.
Maybe that’s what therapy has been trying to teach me all along.
Maybe I’ve spent years waiting to feel confident before acting.
But that’s never actually been my story.
My story has always been the opposite.
I acted.
Then confidence slowly, quietly, caught up.
So maybe Thursday doesn’t have to be magical.
Maybe it grows into something special.
Maybe it lands like a fart in a crowded elevator.
But regardless of how it goes, it simply needs to be the next rep.
Because every comfortable thing in my life today once felt impossible.
Every chapter I’ve ever been proud of began with a blank page.
Every podcast began with an awkward first episode.
Every great conversation began with hello.
Maybe this one begins with coffee.
And maybe that’s enough.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
This one is just Thursday.
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