I was visiting my aunt and her husband in southern Sweden. We had a lovely afternoon. At the end of it we invited them up to Stockholm. It's a 90 minute flight. Hakan answered before my aunt could: "With my health the way it is, we don't travel anymore." He said it flat. Matter of fact, with no self-pity in it at all. "We only take visitors now." These are not people who were ever afraid to go anywhere. They used to spend large parts of the year living in Spain. A year later my mother went to...
12 days ago • 6 min read
When I grew up, I looked at my father as a man who had life figured out. He had his own company. He made good money. He had fathered three sons. He always seemed to have a few well-chosen words of wisdom from the generation before him in his back pocket. He was the strong, silent type. A doer more than a talker. As far as I knew, there was nothing he hadn't already figured out. Then, in what felt like a single season, he was applying for jobs he'd once considered beneath him. Driving...
19 days ago • 4 min read
Most men believe that if they're loyal enough, work hard enough, and stay long enough, their job is safe. I used to believe that too. Then I watched an entire team get erased overnight, with no warning and no evaluation, and I understood something that changed how I think about work permanently. I came in one morning and saw it on the TV in the break room. The year was 2017. I was working as a customer service rep at Telia, Sweden's largest telecom company. Overnight, Telia had axed an entire...
26 days ago • 5 min read
I've tried to become a "gym person" for decades. In different cities. Different countries. Even different continents. And every time, I found the same thing. I was surrounded by people, but everyone had their headphones in. Instead of talking between sets, they were on their phones. At most I got the occasional nod from someone who happened to train at the same time as me. In theory, I was surrounded by like-minded people. In practice, I felt far more alone than I did in my own apartment. It...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
For years, I didn't believe my own words anymore. Not because I was weak. Not because I didn't want it badly enough. But because I kept making the same promise and breaking it in the same way, at the same time, for the same reasons, and somewhere along the way my brain stopped taking me seriously. Here's what the cycle looked like. Monday: clean breakfast, clean lunch, clean dinner. I felt good. Righteous, even. Tuesday: same. I was doing it. This time was different. Tuesday evening: the...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
At 20 years old, I read a book that split my understanding of money in two. Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad is built around a simple contrast. His own father, "Poor Dad", was highly educated, worked hard, climbed the career ladder, and always struggled with money. His best friend's father, "Rich Dad", had little formal education but understood something about money that schools never teach. The difference wasn't income. It was what each man did with it. Poor Dad worked for money. Rich Dad...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
My dad told me:”Start saving for retirement, it’ll be here before you know it”At 22 years old, that sounded like:”Throw good money into a black hole and maybe, 40 years from now something comes back”He meant well. But to me it sounded abstract, distant, and completely unreal. I obviously knew in my head I'd get old eventually. But I couldn't feel it any more than I could feel myself dying or swimming on Mars. He was describing a destination I had no interest in reaching. So I ignored him. For...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Nobody chooses to become a poodle. But this is how it happened to me. I'd consumed the news obsessively for years. Served a steady diet of problems I was in no position to solve. I used to be happy, optimistic — someone who saw the possibilities in everything. Now I believed it was all downhill from here. That this was as good as life was ever going to be. I was 25 years old. In fact, I used to be a runner. Now the only thing I ran to was McDonald's. With no hope, there was no point in...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Years ago I saw a meme I still can't shake. A side-by-side image of Bruce Springsteen and Göran Persson — the former Prime Minister of Sweden.Both born the same year.Both men of power and money.Both 65 at the time of the photo.One was shirtless in the ocean, looking 45.One was pot-bellied, bespectacled, looking like he'd already retired from life. Bruce Springsteen (left), Göran Persson (right) I was shocked that two successful men of the same age could look so different. That's when I made a...
2 months ago • 5 min read