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Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal midlife experiments.
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Hello fellow midlife adventurers!

At first, this experiment is going to seem contradictory.

I have celebrated 2026 so far as a period of “No Measurement.” It’s now June and I still haven’t returned to wearing an Apple Watch, an Oura Ring, or a heart rate monitor. I’m still not posting workouts on Strava. It all continues to feel great.

BUT… especially as I am now firmly in “middle age,” and I know that my body is changing and that a not insignificant number of people around me are discovering serious medical issues, I don’t want to bury my head in the sand and suddenly end up with a health condition that was entirely preventable or manageable.

So I got a barrage of midlife medical testing. I’m so glad I did it, because after a couple of very surprising results, I’m being forced to eat a little bit of crow around not measuring things related to my health.

Here’s how it went down…

My physio friend, Renata Szado, told me about a company called Georgia Healthcare Centre, a private clinic in Vancouver focused on preventive health assessments. Renata offered to introduce me to Ehsan Malaki, the founder. I set up a meeting to find out more and get a tour.

Ehsan used to work in Silicon Valley and it shows. He’s built a company that is focused on prevention instead of reaction, and he’s assembled a team of private healthcare professionals and cutting edge technology to do it.

I told him about the Midlife Field Guide, and wanted to know what tests I should do at this age and stage. Ehsan very kindly offered to give me a ton of tests so that I could share what I learned with all of you in the Midlife Field Guide community.

(Disclosure: Georgia Healthcare Centre provided this assessment to me at no cost so I could write about the experience. They did not pay me, and this piece reflects my own experience and opinions.)

The Body Scan

I arrive at the clinic early morning, with no breakfast or coffee. Not gonna lie, I’m a bit nervous, because at this age, you start wondering if there’s something bad going on inside you that you don’t know about.

First up, the body composition scan. I did a DEXA scan a number of years ago and it was a big contraption that involved lying down on a raising platform while a big scanner moved back and forth across my body.

Here, however, I walk into the room and see this vertical device with a small footprint that looks like one of those scales that can also measure your height. I hop on, grab the handles on the side-rails, and prepare to be there for a while as it scans me. It is over before I know it. The whole process takes about two minutes, and yet, as I will find out, it captured OODLES of data about my body.

The Physical

Next up is the full physical exam with Dr. Payman Nabai. This is decidedly anti-tech. It feels like a throwback to a previous era of seeing a family doctor, when the doctor could take time to ask lots of questions, get to know you, and also do a THOROUGH physical exam. Like… THOROUGH.

It is SO thorough that at one point, it gets awkward and uncomfortable. Dr. Nabai kindly assumes (hopes?) that I am under 50 and when I inform him that I am 54, he regrettably informs me that I might want to consider a prostate exam. I ask him what is recommended. If you’re over 50, the recommendation is that you should get a prostate exam. We both kind of shrug, realize that neither of us really wants to do this, but that it is the right thing to do.

So I curl up in a ball, pull down my pants, and lube up. Thankfully, he is gentle.

As it turns out, I have a slightly enlarged prostate, which is normal for this phase of life. The impact? I can expect occasional difficulty fully emptying my bladder, reduced stream wattage, and more frequent night urination. ✅✅✅

It’s a strange phase of life when you come to accept that you are deteriorating and that some things are not ever going to go back to the way they were in your prime. I don’t really want to imagine what ongoing deterioration of my prostate will mean.

Dr. Nabai and I both clean up, and I am off to the next set of tests.

Eyes, Ears, Lungs

Back into the tech-zone, where I meet Negin, the medical technician. I have three tests done in a relatively small room that on first glance, appears to have no medical testing equipment in it. It’s just an office with a desk and a couple of chairs.

For my vision test, I expect the giant eye-testing machine at the optometrist and I’m surprised when Negin gives me an Oculus Rift to put on. I have a full eye exam done on a VR headset and it is much more like playing an immersive video game than being in a doctor’s office.

Then Negin gives me a tiny tube plugged into her laptop via USB. I blow into it a couple of times and get a full spirometry breathing test in minutes.

Finally, I have a hearing exam, which is done entirely on an iPad with headphones.

All this feels like the medical equivalent of replacing your 1970s hi-fi stereo system and speakers with an iPod and AirPods.

While I definitely have some age-related deterioration, eyes, ears, and spirometry tests turn up nothing worrisome.

The Dietician

I am ushered into another office next door, where I meet Olya Voikin, the team dietician. We have an extended conversation, where she asks me a lot about what I eat and drink, how much I eat and drink, and my general lifestyle.

I learn a TON in a short period of time. Olya instantly recognizes that I am having way too much sugar (thanks, oat milk and Ben & Jerry’s Tonight Dough ice cream!). Sugar is the first of several massive red flags for me.

Olya made me laugh when she told me:

”A Clif bar is 20 grams of sugar. It has that cliffhanger picture on the bar because it’s for somebody doing intense physical activity. It’s not for the regular person sitting in an office.”

On the flip side, I am also not getting enough protein. For my age, height and weight, I should be having somewhere between 100-150g of protein every day. That feels like a LOT, but as we age, our muscles begin to deteriorate. She tells me that not only do we need to eat more protein, we also need to lift more heavy weights more often. (This foreshadows my next red flag…)

So it’s not even mid-morning and I’ve already got a significant lifestyle change on the menu… a menu full of protein and with much less sugar.

Fitness and Mobility

I leave Olya’s office and go to the next door down. Here I meet Dr. Neda Khaledi, the kinesiologist and exercise physiologist, where I get a full fitness and mobility assessment.

Much like the physical, Neda spends a lot of time with me, asking all sorts of questions about my activities, my lifestyle, my past injuries and surgeries, and more. (As I get older, I feel like I could fill a keynote speaking slot with the list of everything that has gone wrong with my body…)

Then Dr. Khaledi takes me through a complete functional movement assessment, which includes a variety of different challenges, from balancing on a single leg to single leg lunges, and from squats while holding a bar above your head to single leg lifts. We wrap with an extended plank and a grip strength test, which end up being the only tests I crushed today. I plank for over 3 minutes (thanks, pilates!) and my grip strength means I should be able to open any tight jar lid for the foreseeable future. BRING ME YOUR STICKY JAM JARS! (Oddly, grip strength is an indicator of longevity because according to research by Harvard Medical School via JTECH Medical, an 11-pound drop in grip strength correlates with a 17% increased risk of dying from heart disease.)

Otherwise, I have some mild issues with an ankle and a shoulder, but nothing major. I’m feeling pretty good about the state of my body at this point!

Dr. Khaledi then walks me through the results from my earlier body composition scan. I am somewhat of a beanpole: I’m 6 feet tall and my weight generally sticks around the 170-175 pound range. The waist on my pants is generally 31 or 32 inches. I have always considered myself pretty trim and healthy. I exercise a lot, play lots of tennis, do weekly pilates and weight training, and even started running (poorly) in 2025. So I expect a full green light and gold star on my body composition scan. I do not get it.

I am SHOCKED.

I am at the high end of normal for fat! I am at the high end of normal for weight. I am at the high end of normal for BMI. My visceral fat is at the high end of normal.

Apparently my body frame masks the fat I’m carrying, which mostly gathers around organs (visceral). This is bad. It turns out “skinny” and “healthy” aren’t the same thing.

To make matters worse and more humiliating, I am way below average for muscle mass. Another red flag!

Dr. Khaledi tells me ”in your age population, you’re at the 20th percentile—maybe 80% of your population has more muscle.”

WTF???

While activities like tennis or running are great for your cardiovascular system, they don’t build muscle. And your muscle starts wasting away at midlife and accelerates as you get older. (Hence the protein issue highlighted by Olya…)

I am 100% going to have to do more strength training coming out of this.

UGH.

The Heart

In the same room, I then have an ECG test, which is a recording of how your heart is working, and a stress test that involves hopping on a treadmill while connected to a bunch of wires. It starts off at a snail’s pace and gradually increases in speed and elevation. You only do the test until you reach 85% of a heart rate threshold. Your heart, blood pressure, and blood oxygen level are all being monitored throughout. I briefly worry about falling off the treadmill connected to all the wires and ripping all the testing equipment down onto the floor, but I stay calm and carry on.

The results of these cardiology tests get sent to Dr. Majid Pourmand, who I meet with later. (Dr. Pourmand is also Instagram-famous - 191k followers!) Yet again, I have an extended, non-rushed conversation with him about my health. After a physical examination, he opens up what looks like a 1990s era laptop, but is actually a portable medical testing device that does an ultrasound of my heart in his office.

The results? A normal ECG, a negative stress test, and a lower-than-average resting heart rate. Dr. Pourmand basically told me to keep doing what I’m doing, which is a huge relief after my body composition surprise.

The Gut Microbiome Shotgun

Ehsan also tells me about two specialized sets of tests that they can conduct, a gut microbiome shotgun test, and genetic testing.

Genetic testing is apparently not for everyone, because it will tell you if you are genetically predisposed to certain types of cancer or other illnesses. Some people want that information and like to know. Some people find it anxiety-inducing to know. I am in the latter camp and decide not to find out.

During COVID, I discovered a small growth on my thyroid and had to wait a few weeks to get a biopsy of it. It was benign, which is great, but I did not sleep well while I was waiting for it. I feel like if I found out I was predisposed to some type of illness and I couldn’t do much about it, I would never sleep or relax, and would likely spend most of my waking hours trying to get AI to find a preventative cure.

However, I do decide to do the gut microbiome test, which will tell me which bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites are living inside me and whether there are any changes I should make to my diet or lifestyle as a result. I have a lot of random night itching that I have never been able to figure out. So much that I basically trim my fingernails down to nothing so I don’t claw myself in my sleep. Maybe this will help me figure out what’s causing it?

So I go home and poop on a swab, put it into a little bottle of liquid, and return it for shipment to a gut microbiome lab for testing.

When I get the results, another shock: my microbiome scored 36.4 out of 100, which they politely file under “Not Good!” Here are the highlights of what was found:

• My good bacteria are running low. One key probiotic strain is almost non-existent.

• I have early signs of antibiotic resistance.

• I have a bacterial signature that basically screams “too much fat, not enough plants.”

As a result, I am going to start ingesting a lot more fermented foods. (Not like RFK Jr and his “ferments” obsession though…)

VO₂ max

A week later, I’m back in Dr. Khaledi’s office. Even though I’m apparently overweight and under-muscled, I still cling to the idea of myself as an athlete. I am curious about the VO₂ max test. VO₂ max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use per minute, per kilo of bodyweight (mL/kg/min), measured at peak effort.

This measurement keeps coming up as a marker for long-term health and as something that you can improve with concerted effort. As someone who had childhood asthma and has trouble with endurance sports, I am worried that this is going to be another big red flag about my midlife health.

I strap on headgear that covers my nose and mouth with a tight seal. It’s like something a deranged orthodontist invented in his basement. Also… I look a LOT like Bane from the Dark Knight and instantly have the urge to start talking in a menacing growl like Tom Hardy. It is a teeny bit claustrophobic, but then again… I’m also pretty brave.

Once everything is connected, I hop on the treadmill.

It starts off with a breezy walking pace. I pass the five minutes of walking by looking out the window and staring out at people watching TV in a neighbouring condo. I hope they don’t look over and see my Bane-like figure observing them and call the police.

At the end of five minutes, Neda asks me for a fatigue level from 1 to 10. I’m at a 1.

Next, we begin a series of stages that last three minutes each. Each stage gets faster and includes an increasing incline on the treadmill.

My fatigue level rises to 2 out of 10.

Then, next stage, a 3.5 out of 10. Next stage, moving to jogging speed, a 6 out of 10.

Faster jogging with increased incline, and I’m at 8 out of 10. By the end of the three minutes, I’m breathing hard and my heart rate is skyrocketing. I look at Neda and decide to stop the test.

First impression? That escalated quickly! I thought I was going to be on the treadmill for 45 minutes or an hour, but the combination of the increasing incline and the speed really hit me hard and fast. I feel like I kinda failed at this test.

However, in a pleasant surprise, my VO₂ max landed at 54.2, which puts me in the 91st percentile for my age (!!!). The childhood-asthma kid who’s terrible at endurance sports is, apparently, fitter than 9 out of 10 men his age. I did not see that coming!

Reflections on a Proactive Approach to Healthcare

What strikes me about my two days of testing is that everyone here has a different perspective relative to the traditional medical system, which primarily deals with medical problems occurring right now. At Georgia Healthcare Centre, though, the team is clearly focused on prevention and longevity. They want to find out what problems might happen or are likely to happen… and address them before they become problems.

It’s the difference between being proactive and reactive. In an ideal world, you’d do both, especially for your health.

And being proactive instead of reactive brings me back to measurement. An Oura Ring and Apple Watch could not have told me about my higher than expected visceral fat, my wimpy lack of muscles, my crappy microbiome, or my overconsumption of sugar and underconsumption of protein.

For my issues, the Oura and Apple Watch were noise, and these tests were true signal.

There is a huge difference between constant measurement and meaningful measurement.

Dr. Nabai nailed it when he said this to me during my physical exam:

I now know what I should worry about, and what I shouldn’t worry about. And at this stage of life, and when I think about what “Future Steve” would counsel me to do, I don’t think I can afford not to make the necessary lifestyle changes.

An unexpectedly big part of the Midlife Field Guide so far has involved committing to doing things that I didn’t really want to do, because they’re either unpleasant (see “running”), giving up something that I enjoy (see “booze” and “phone”), or forcing me to change the way I think (see “no measurement”). And yet, every time I make these changes, I’m very happy I did.

So these medical tests have provided me with the next wave of changes to bring into my life. Sugar reduction. Protein packing. Microbiome rebuilding. Lifting more weights. I’ll report back when I have some results!

How about you? Have you been avoiding a physical health exam? What would you want to know, and what would you not want to know?

One huge caveat to everything I’ve shared here. Georgia Healthcare Centre is a private healthcare company. I live in Canada, where we have one of the better public healthcare systems on the planet. This type of proactive testing is not offered for free to Canadians. I need to acknowledge how very fortunate I am to have been able to get all these tests done, because they are expensive and I’m conscious that not everyone can afford to do them.

Thanks for reading.

Steve

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal midlife experiments.
Subscribe for free!

Subscribe now

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me over here at Midlife Field Guide HQ. There’s been travel mixed with life events that have kept me occupied over the past few months. In fact, to prove the point, I’m actually on a bullet train whipping its way between Tokyo and Kyoto as I type this. Fancy, huh? :)

But there is something I wanted to share with you. An update on me and Suz’s 25th anniversary Fiddler on the Roof–inspired production that’s pleasing me to no end. If you’re new to this adventure, you can read about it here, here, and here.

The big headline that’s tickling me right now is that it’s going well. Really well. Thanks to the help of some amazing writer friends who have kicked our asses in just the right ways, Suz and I have pushed ourselves and have now written something that we’re genuinely proud of. It tells our story, the story of our lives together, woven in somewhat absurdly with the songs of Fiddler on the Roof. It’s certainly not what we imagined when we started this process, but it feels totally right. And the strangest thing is that when we stand back and look at what we’ve written, it actually feels like a “show.”

My previous collaborations with Suz include some not-small-at-all things, like raising a couple of kids and making a home. These were all creative projects, but this is the first time we’ve been true creative collaborators on a project like this. She’s helped me with my writing many times — her editing of each and every Substack post I write has pushed me to be far more honest in my writing than I ever imagined I would be, something I’m grateful for every time she sits down, reads my work, and points out my blind spots.

And, frankly, I have a few blind spots.

In my twenties, fresh into my career, I received feedback from an employer that I had this quirk: the two of us would have a conversation, we’d agree on something, and then I’d go off and do it my own way anyway. I remember telling my mother about this feedback, and she could totally relate. Apparently, parenting me was very much the same experience.

I assumed that co-writing the script for our anniversary musical event would follow the same pattern. The two of us would discuss, and then I’d take the lead and go off and figure the thing out. And while it’s true I’d never written a play before, I had written plenty of scripts for documentaries and podcasts, so out of the two of us, I arrogantly assumed I was going to take the lead.

It was during one of our first writing sessions that my assumptions were proven totally wrong. We were away for a weekend and on the first night we spent time roughly sketching out the show. We weren’t going to be able to continue the next day because Suz had an online meeting she needed to attend. I told her no problem, I’d carry on without her.

When I told her that, she looked hurt. She replied, “Weren’t we supposed to be writing this together?”

I was taken aback. What did she mean I couldn’t just charge ahead and do it myself? How else were we going to get this done? But, of course, she was right. This was our project to do together. Just like raising kids, it needed to be a true collaboration in order to work. At that moment, I realized that I couldn’t just do the thing I always do and assume that I would be able to simply take control.

And so we started to find ways to truly collaborate. As we pitched ideas back and forth, there was often laughter and ease, and sometimes our sensibilities would bump up against each other and tension would ensue. There were times when Suz would want to stop and workshop a scene until we felt thoroughly done, and in those moments there were parts of me that would flare up with a desire to charge ahead. I’d say, “Let’s figure it out later!” even if I wasn’t exactly sure when “later” was going to be.

The benefit of doing this with someone I’ve chosen to share my life with is that we were able to use the same tools that we use in our relationship to resolve our creative conflicts. When conflicts came up in our writing process, as opposed to brushing them off we took the time to debrief them with care and intention — and not surprisingly, the conflict had nothing to do with the writing, and everything to do with long-standing dynamics that we both carry. It’s a process that has not only made us better writing partners, but better partners as a whole. These conflicts and resolutions have opened up another avenue for dialogue between us, and we’ve been able to unearth some pretty powerful behaviors that we both carry and recognize for their weaknesses as well as their beauty.

Coming face to face with my old patterns, not listening, assuming that I could always just barrel ahead, has made me better in other parts of my life too. I see these patterns clearly now. I recognize my strengths and my limitations. And because of what I am learning about myself from this Fiddler project, I’ve been able to sharpen my capacity to listen and to honour other people’s unique gifts.

I look at the script now and am proud to say that it truly reflects both of our sensibilities. It’s playful, it’s honest and it’s uniquely us. There is a wisdom and ease in the writing that has been achieved through living decades of a life together.

There was a moment a couple of weeks ago while Suz and I were lying in bed, talking through ideas for the show. I was tired and wanted to go to sleep, but she was in the flow state and wanted to keep going. At one point she got so excited she literally bolted up out of bed and started pitching me ideas right then and there from the foot of the bed, wildly demonstrating her points through exaggerated arm gestures. I was so attracted to her in that moment, in a way that went beyond anything physical. It was the sight of her lit up. Passionate. Alive with something we are making, together.

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Last weekend, I went for a bike ride that no longer exists.

It’s actually been a while since my last post here, when I wrote about the end of my month of “no measurement” and shared my “Traffic Light Dashboard” for how I want to measure my life going forward.

Why I Haven’t Written In A While

The month of no measurement was more of a revelation than I expected it to be. I knew going into it that I had a strong desire to take all the devices that tracked me, gave me data, and scored me and hurl them all into the ocean. I didn’t expect that actually doing it would be such a relief.

I also didn’t expect that it would make me start to question why I was doing many things in my life, including the Midlife Field Guide.

Most of us live in a world where we’re taught to try hard to be successful, to achieve lofty goals, and to ‘win’ at whatever is important in our lives. And yet there’s never a finish line. There is only more. And more. And more.

I’ve (sadly) been hard-wired in “achievement mode” as long as I can remember, but I’ve never properly stepped back to question why.

Abandoning the scoreboards that I had paid a lot of attention to (sleep, health, social media, Substack numbers, etc) felt like a giant weight lifted off my chest. I don’t want to go full tin-foil hat here, but taking a break from everything really gave me clarity around how much we are all being programmed, conditioned, guilted, and manipulated into doing things that are not in our own best interest.

It made me deeply rethink the notions of success and achievement.

• What am I doing because other companies or people have made me think I should do it?

• What am I doing because it feels like I should be ‘successful’ at it?

• What am I doing because I actually want to do it and enjoy doing it?

One of the hardest things I thought about was this Midlife Field Guide. I got into my head. I worried about the origin of the project, which began with the dream of building something big that might be my ‘next chapter’ career-wise.

I worried that the experiments were making me seem like a weirdo or one of those insufferable longevity optimizers who secretly just want to sell you supplements.

I was worried that I was doing it in public for attention or ego or to show the world that I had not disappeared, and was still doing unconventional creative work.

Worst of all, I worried that the entire premise of this project was off-base.

The description at the top of every post includes this phrase: “Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?” The more I thought about this wording, the more I worried that I was yet again trying to ‘achieve’ and be ‘successful,’ this time at midlife.

At the heart of all of this lies the cliched reality show question: am I here for the right reasons?

The Revelation on Wheels

Last weekend, my wife Debbie suggested that she and I go on a bike ride and grab a bite to eat. It was a shockingly nice spring day here in Vancouver and it instantly felt like a great idea. So we dusted off our bikes after a winter in the garage, pumped up the tires, and headed out.

I was missing several things. I left without an Apple Watch, an Oura ring, or anything to connect to Strava. (Strava is a popular social network for athletic endeavours, mostly used for publicly posting runs and bike rides.)

I felt a bit naked pedalling off down the road without all my stuff.

Usually, when I go out for a bike ride with my regular group of guys (the “Dad Squad” bike gang), we stick to a few tried and true routes that are popular with cyclists. On this ride with Debbie, though, we were heading to a destination neither of us had been to before. It was not a standard bike route, so we stopped periodically to make sure we knew where we were going.

We ended up cruising down a variety of residential streets, going pretty slowly and talking as we biked. For a stretch, we were riding through a neighbourhood that we hadn’t ever spent much time in, and we were looking at all the unusual home designs and noting that everything looked like a time capsule to the 70s or 80s. The birds were chirping, celebrating the arrival of spring.

And that’s when it hit me.

I felt like a kid riding his bike around the neighbourhood for the first time… since the 70s or 80s. We were just riding our bikes… for fun.

We weren’t tracking our routes or segments. We weren’t timing our rides or measuring the distance we were riding. We weren’t going to post the ride publicly for others to see. We weren’t comparing ourselves to other cyclist who have ridden in this neighbourhood.

We were just riding. And it was liberating. I felt like Elliott in E.T. more than a M.A.M.L. (Middle-Aged Man in Lycra).

I often feel a bit of dread about going on a bike ride, often because of all the things that were not on this ride: timing, tracking, measurement, and public posting. On a “normal” bike ride, the ride ends with uploading it to Strava, tagging the people you rode with, and checking to see if you hit any personal bests on segments of your ride. And then you get to watch “kudos” dropped on your ride from other people ostensibly celebrating your amazing feat of athleticism.

How did I get to the point where going for a bike ride wasn’t really about the fun of riding a bike, but was about ‘how well’ I rode a bike? Or how I compared to other cyclists?

Just riding a bike for the simple joy of riding a bike was a lot more fun and meaningful than setting a new PR racing around Stanley Park.

There’s a common refrain among people who use Strava—if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen. I’m sure it was some marketing genius at the company who came up with this line, but I’ve heard it from so many people, most often as peer pressure to get others to join and post their activities. I’m not trying to slam Strava, and I know it’s a useful product if you’re genuinely training for a particular event or performance target, but a better version for me right now is this:

“If it’s not on Strava, it’s probably more fun than if it was.”

Since that ride with Debbie, I’ve dusted off a cruiser bike that has been sitting unused in our garage for years. I’ve started doing errands and little rides on a bike built not for racing, but for… cruising around. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom here in Vancouver and it’s been glorious.

There is magic in a bike ride that ceases to exist as soon as it is done.

Stop Managing, Start Living

The most important insight out of all of this for me has been that I have regularly turned fun activities into a means to an end. I’ve felt like whatever I put my time and energy into has to end up turning into something else: success, achievement, status, scoreboards, followers, revenue, optimal health, and whatever else you can think of.

Living midlife, or any other stage of life, with a sense of urgency to “figure it out” or “optimize” it so that you’re not “wasting” your precious time feels foolish and short-sighted. It’s often at the expense of enjoying the real-time life that you are living right now.

I am trying to shift from “figuring out” midlife to embracing midlife. I want to stop optimizing and measuring what matters and instead deepen my questioning and understanding of what really matters.

A Shift In The Midlife Field Guide

Oddly, the bike ride answered my ongoing questions about the Midlife Field Guide. I’ve framed the Midlife Field Guide as a project, but my life is not a project. I viewed the experiments as a means to an end, as if doing enough of them would lead me to all the answers I’ve been looking for, and getting a gold star in Midlife Studies.

But the bike ride reminded me about why I wanted to do the Midlife Field Guide in the first place—I was excited about it and it made my life more interesting.

So, I want to keep going with the Midlife Field Guide, but with a shift. I’d now just like to focus on experiencing each experiment fully instead of figuring out “The Ultimate, Integrated Midlife Framework” (TM).

I don’t want to “win” midlife or be “successful” at midlife. I’d just like to be the author of my own midlife story and enjoy this phase of life while I’m in it.

Life is to be lived, not managed and measured.

If this resonates with you, here are a few prompts to go a little deeper:

• Do you have a version of Strava in your life?

• Have any of your fun hobbies turned into performance?

• What are you doing just for fun?

Thanks for reading this edition.

Steve

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

Subscribe now

Hello Midlifers!

In January, I conducted an experiment: Stop measuring everything in my life. No Apple Watch. No Oura Ring. No step counts, sleep scores, or productivity metrics.

Now the month is over. Here’s what happened...

My Month of No Measurement

Not measuring anything for an entire month generated deep concern from several of my apps, who feared something catastrophic had happened to me, with my health declining precipitously, my steps reduced to zero, and no sleep whatsoever.

I loved getting these notifications.

It made me feel like I’m some sort of rebel. “I’m doing ALL SORTS OF STUFF, but I’m not giving you any data about it! My life and my activities are suddenly a SECRET!”

(It’s a secret to me, too.)

I don’t really know how I slept in January.

I don’t know how many days I closed my rings, hit 10,000 steps, or was “ready.”

I don’t know whether I gained or lost followers on my social media accounts.

And you know what? It feels great. Turns out that nothing happens when you stop measuring. Except for relief. It’s like a big exhale. Whew! It’s genuinely been a big release of stress and daily metrics-generated anxiety that I did not know I was carrying. I don’t have to do this anymore. I can just live my life and pay attention to how I actually feel.

Do I feel hungry? Eat.

Do I feel tired? Sleep.

Do I feel brain fog? Stop working.

On January 23, I even cancelled my monthly Oura ring subscription. I very quickly realized that I don’t miss the daily health dashboard. It’s a great product, but I just don’t want to be tracked or measured anymore, or scored for my sleep.

I decided to listen to my body instead of an app.

And I will see a doctor for check-ups and anytime anything feels off.

I will confess that I DO know our subscriber numbers on Substack, but I have an excuse: if you want to write or publish a newsletter, the stats are literally at the top of the writing home page. I hadn’t realized it before, but almost the full space above the fold on the Substack dashboard is filled with… growth metrics. The message is clear—as a writer, your primary focus should be on more people and more views.

Up and to the right!

Much like the insights generated by my 5-Week Phone Fight, I have come to realize how much I am being shaped by the data collected about me and the scoreboards and dashboards that I’m presented with.

‘ENOUGH!’ to ‘Never Enough!’

It’s not just Substack. Every dashboard is about more. More growth, more optimization, more efficiency.

The data and the scoreboards constantly tell me that I am “never enough.” I’m never fit or healthy enough, productive enough, popular enough, wealthy enough, or successful enough. Oh, and my posts aren’t clickable, openable or shareable enough.

And the only solution is MORE. Forever.

‘Never enough’ hit me hard at the end of 2025. I felt like a failure, and I got myself into a pretty deep funk. My book was not a runaway best-seller. My keynote speaking died down after the mania of my book launch. As you can tell from the graph above, the Midlife Field Guide grew consistently, but there has been no hockey-stick growth curve yet.

Scoreboards almost always tell you how you’re doing relative to everyone else. And with pretty much everything on the planet, almost no one is the best at something. There is always someone who’s healthier, wealthier, smarter, more talented, more attractive… you name it.

I felt like a failure because at the end of the year, my feeds were filled with celebrations of how many books other people have sold, how many speeches other people gave in 2025, how big other people’s follower counts are, and other markers of success worth sharing publicly. It’s easy to fall prey to comparing yourself to impossible standards that make you miserable.

I let other people’s scoreboards affect my self-worth and my mood. With some time and reflection, I see things very differently.

I love my book. I’m hugely proud of it. And the goal was never to be a best-seller. It was to make the best book I possibly could for a very specific group of people, and I believe I did that.

I had a GREAT time giving talks in Copenhagen, New York City, Athens, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver last year. I loved every engagement, and I’m excited to do more. Plus, I probably wouldn’t even be happy living in hotels as a road warrior speaking all the time.

And so what if the Midlife Field Guide hasn’t gone viral, because it has changed my life for the better in so many ways. I have heard so much positive feedback from people in this community who are making changes in their own lives because of it. People starting phone detoxes, extended breaks from alcohol, and avoiding scoreboards as a result of the writing Geoff and I are doing here.

Until I stopped measuring, it was hard to realize how much ‘never enough’ has shaped me. Everything has become a competition, and we only validate the winners.

These are the ways “never enough” dashboards impact me:

• Anxiety: Checking scores created a daily cycle of stress I didn’t realize I was carrying

• Shame: More often than not, the data made me feel bad about myself

• Comparison: Every metric compares me to others—including extreme outliers I’ll never (or should) compete with

• Addiction: Gamification (streaks, challenges, badges) keep me checking obsessively

• Control: These companies are shaping my decisions and my life with their strategic dashboard choices.

Scoreboards Make Everything a Means to an End

I’m not suggesting all measurement is bad. Medical testing, structural testing on engineering projects, safety testing standards on cars—these are all essential.

However, if something really matters to us personally, measurement kills the magic.

For me, I love creating things. I love writing, producing audio and video shows, and performing. I also love playing sports. When I pay attention to follower counts or growth rates or revenue from my personal creative work, or judge my sports activities against everyone else, those activities cease to be things I do for fun.

They become a means to an end.

And this month, I realized I’ve been treating too many things I love as a means to an end.

ENOUGH!

Check Your Scoreboards

A little over a year ago, I wrote a post about the ideas in my book, encouraging readers to “Pay Attention to What You Pay Attention To,” because whatever we pay attention to shapes how we spend our lives.

In 2026, I have a new, adjacent insight: pay attention to the scoreboards you pay attention to. The scoreboards, dashboards, and data you measure will indeed shape your decisions and your life.

Here’s an interesting exercise:

• Visit each of the apps, dashboards, and scoreboards that collects data about you

• What choices have the designers made about which behaviours are being rewarded?

• How many of these dashboards are designed to:

  • Get you to keep checking them daily, or even more frequently, likely for their benefit more than yours?

  • Compare your data to other people, making you feel worse about yourself?

  • Encourage never-ending growth, making you feel like you are never enough?

• How valuable are the insights generated?

• Which ones are beneficial for you? Which ones are beneficial to the companies that created the dashboards?

I Want Fewer Experts and More Coaches.

It’s not just the data that has been a negative influence in my life. It’s also the cultural narrative of success and achievement. No matter what dashboard you are paying attention to, there is a guru or celebrated expert who will tell you how to “win.”

And that is where we come full circle back to where this whole experiment started, with listening to Arthur C. Brooks on the Tim Ferriss podcast and realizing that the advice being given was completely unrealistic for an average person.

At this stage of my life, I am tired of listening to “experts” with their own fountain-of-youth protocols telling me what I need to do.

It’s all made me wonder, why am I doing what I’m doing? And what truly matters?

I am coming away from a month without metrics with a very unusual conclusion.

I’m less interested in advice right now and more drawn to questions. I want fewer experts and more coaches.

The difference? Experts give you answers. Coaches help you find your own.

I know many fantastic coaches and therapists, and they all have one thing in common: they are curious instead of certain. They ask questions instead of prescribing solutions.

Michael Bungay-Stanier’s category-defining book, The Coaching Habit, is launching a special 10th anniversary edition and I highly recommend it. And maybe, when it comes to data, scoreboards, and dashboards, we can find clarity by using one of MBS’s essential questions: “What do I want?”

Once we know what we actually want, then we can decide whether the things we’re tracking and measuring are helping or hurting.

Designing My Own Dashboard

So at the end of my metrics-free month, I am left wondering about what role measurement should play in my life. And that got me thinking about my podcasting days at Pacific Content. Our CFO, Rob Leadley, had a high-level dashboard that included, among others, the following questions:

• Am I loving my work?

• Am I making good money?

• Am I loving my life?

The scores for each question were traffic light colours: green, yellow, or red.

🟢🟡🔴

Nothing else.

Green meant everything is great. Nothing needed. Yellow was a warning, but nothing urgent. Worth paying attention to and discussing how to get it back to green. Red was an urgent problem. Red meant we needed to talk about it immediately and craft a concrete plan. If something was yellow or red, we could access and dig deep into the data, but it was a conscious choice.

It was simple and very effective.

I am going to apply Rob’s thinking to my own dashboard. None of the things I have considered are quantitative. If something is going to shape my behaviour, and therefore my life, these are the factors I’m going to consider:

• Am I spending quality time with good humans?

• Am I making healthy choices (without becoming obsessive about it)?

• Am I having fun?

• Am I making a difference?

• Am I learning, growing, and staying curious?

• Am I loving my life?

Green. Yellow. Red.

🟢🟡🔴

I think that’s enough for me.

Going forward, I have no plans to resume wearing my Apple Watch or Oura ring. I have no interest in regularly checking follower counts, growth metrics, or open rates.

I’m going to use Rob’s 🟢🟡🔴 idea and my own intuition to guide my decisions and behaviour.

And I’m going to keep asking more coach-like questions (What do I really want?) and try to refrain from offering unsolicited advice or solutions to others 🤪

(If you’re looking for some terrific coaches to follow or work with, check out Peter Reek, Natalie Ruskin, Andrea Rathborne, Jen Moroz, and Michael Bungay-Stanier.)

Are there any dashboards you’ve started questioning? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading,

Steve

(P.S. Since sending this post out via email, I’ve had many people tell they would like this basic dashboard to exist… so I built it! Let me know what you think if you decide to give it a try! https://trafficlight.midlifefieldguide.com/ )

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

Subscribe now

I have a complicated relationship to dancing.

I remember the first time I really let loose and danced. Sure, I had moved my body to music before this, but this was the first time I felt immersed in it.

I was thirteen years old at a friend’s backyard birthday party. He had dragged his bulky stereo system outside, and a gaggle of preteens had gathered around it, moving to the best that 80s pop had to offer us.

It was nighttime, with very low lighting. Something about the darkness helped me feel less self-conscious and I found myself moving to the beat in a way I never had before. I felt free, feeling the music in my body and then letting myself go with it. Even now, those memories carry a sense of liberation.

The next day, I told a friend about it. About how free I had felt and how much fun I’d had. Her response would linger longer than I expected.

“You know,” she said, “you dance funny.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You didn’t once move your hips.”

It’s one of those moments that may have been intended as constructive criticism, or at least as constructive as a thirteen-year-old can manage, but it certainly didn’t land that way. The fact that I remember that conversation so clearly tells me how impactful it was. It was deflating. From that point on whenever I dance, I am deeply self-conscious, particularly about whether or not I am moving my hips.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about trying things that I hate. After decades of being immersed in a story about how much I hate yoga, I went to a yoga class. And you know what? I didn’t hate it. I also shared that I’m traditionally not a joiner. Going to a one-off yoga class is one thing, but signing up for something that requires showing up every week is something else entirely.

So a few months ago, when my wife and I started imagining something fun we could do together as a couple, a dance class was not high on my list. But given my current experiment of challenging the things I think I hate, I was willing to try. A few nights later, we were browsing the website of a dance studio near our house.

I had walked past this studio countless times while walking my dog at night, but I had never been inside. My eyes were always drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. At night, they turned the studio into a kind of dance class fishbowl, where anyone passing by could see exactly what was happening inside the brightly lit rooms. How would I feel being one of the dancers on display? I wasn’t sure. But the convenience of the studio outweighed my fear of public awkwardness.

The studio offers many styles of dance classes, but aside from salsa, I hadn’t heard of any of them. After some Googling, we signed up for a Bachata class because, according to Google, Bachata is good for beginners, easier to learn than salsa, and generally considered sexier. All of which sounded great to me. 🙂

A few weeks later, we were taking off our boots, slipping on our running shoes, and walking into the studio. The giant street-facing windows mercifully had their shades drawn. I was quietly relieved.

The instructor, a trim and friendly man in his fifties, had us line up facing the mirror and showed us a few very basic steps. Three steps to the left and a tap. Three steps to the right and a tap. I fixated on the instructor’s hips, which flowed easily, and then on my own reflection, which did not. I glanced around and saw that I was not alone in my clunkiness.

With the instructor’s encouragement, we learned a few more steps on our own and then partnered up. Bachata is a traditionally gendered dance with clearly defined leader and follower roles. We were not expected to identify in any traditionally gendered way, but still there needed to be a lead and a follow. I was assigned the traditional lead role, and my wife explored the role of follower.

As the class went on, we began rotating partners. It felt good to dance with people who were clearly much more experienced at this dance form than I was, as well as some who, like me, were beginners. With practice, I felt competent with beginner movements and connected to my body. It simply felt good to move. When the class ended, I was surprised that I was now looking forward to next week.

During the next week, I practiced the steps we had learned at home. It was still a very self-conscious process. I stood in front of the mirror staring at my hips as I counted each step carefully, making sure everything was perfect. By the time the next class rolled around, I was ready.

We learned more steps in the second class and danced with our partners and others from the group. Bachata still felt foreign to me, but I was starting to understand the basics. Even when I couldn’t nail the moves, I at least knew what I was doing wrong. That week I went home and practiced again, counting carefully and making sure my feet matched the numbers in my head.

By the end of the third class, I was feeling pretty good about my Bachata skills. I wasn’t the best in the room, but I also wasn’t the worst. As my wife and I walked home, I shared my growing confidence. She listened and then said, “I’m glad you’re feeling that way, but what I’d really love to see is Bachata Geoff.”

I didn’t understand what she meant. She explained that I was dancing in a very self-conscious way, and that she would love to see me stop trying to dance perfectly and actually embody the movements.

I was suddenly back in that backyard at thirteen. I had felt free in my body, only to be told I was doing it “wrong”. Once again, in a moment where I thought everything was connecting for me, rather than praise, I was being told that I was a bad dancer.

I replayed that conversation in my head all week. Why would she say that? With only one class left in our month of Bachata, I was not looking forward to going back.

On Tuesday night, we tied our boots anyway and headed up the street with a dark cloud hanging over me. Her comment was still very much echoing in my head.

When we arrived, I noticed something new. This time, the shades covering the large street-facing windows were raised, exposing our dancing to anyone passing by. “Great, now everyone can see what a terrible Bachata dancer I am,” I thought. But the class was only an hour long, and it was our last one. Once it was over, I never had to take another Bachata class in my life. So I resigned myself to just getting through it.

By this point, we had learned all the basic movements, and this class was about stringing them together. After a quick review, the instructor played music and called out patterns. No matter who I danced with, my wife or anyone else, I felt stiff and wooden. Where was “Bachata Geoff”? Maybe all those comments were right. Maybe I really was a bad dancer.

And then something shifted. I realized that I didn’t need to do this. I chose to do this. And whether I ever danced Bachata perfectly actually didn’t matter.

I began to experience the negative voices in my head differently, questioning the way I had first interpreted them. Was being told I didn’t move my hips actually helpful? Would moving from my hips help me drop more fully into the flow of the dance? And maybe finding “Bachata Geoff” was actually an invitation to enter into a state where my body could respond to the music, rather than simply moving robotically, counting steps, and chasing perfection.

As we rotated partners, I stopped comparing myself to others. I focused on the music and the sensation of movement. I may not have executed the steps exactly as taught, but it didn’t matter. I was leading, and my partners, including my wife, were happy to follow. It felt freeing.

By the end of the class, I felt good. I wasn’t suddenly a great dancer, but I was present in my body, moving without overthinking every step. I had shown up, stayed with the discomfort, and let myself be in the experience. With the windows open, anyone passing by could see my wife and I moving freely across the dance floor and I welcomed it.

Beyond the classes, I haven’t yet tested my Bachata skills in the wild, and I’m not sure if I ever will. But being challenged to find “Bachata Geoff” was transformational. It was an invitation to fully embody whatever practice I am engaged in. To let it move through my body, into my heart, and out into the rest of my life.

Testing the stories I carry about the things I think I hate, or think I’m no good at, has opened me up in unexpected ways. Are there more Geoff’s living dormant inside me waiting to be discovered? Stay tuned…

XOXOXO,

Geoff

Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
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Hello Midlifers,

Welcome to the final instalment of my stand-up comedy experiment: The Live Showcase!

(In case you missed the first two parts, I am attempting to overcome past demons that have convinced me I’m not funny. I’ve been doing a stand-up comedy course… with my 23-year-old daughter, taught by professional comic Katie-Ellen Humphries. So far, it’s been nerve-wracking, joyful, and a source of immense parental pride.)

We’ve done a crash course in comedy: four weeks of classes to develop five minutes of original material. The grand finale of the course is a student showcase in front of a live audience at Chill X Studio in Vancouver.

Will either of us choke, blank, or bomb? Can I exorcise my comedy demons on stage?

Here’s how it went down…

Anxiety Comparison: Improv vs Standup

I have not been this nervous in a LONG time. And that is surprising to me.

When I was younger, I performed improv weekly… for years. And you would think that going up on stage with NOTHING planned planned must be more anxiety-inducing than going up with fully scripted material, but for me, the opposite is true.

With improv, the audience knows you have nothing planned in advance. It’s a high-wire act with no net, so expectations are set appropriately. Improv is often scene-based, where a story unfolds on stage, and audiences are happy to see where it goes without requiring gut-busting laughs all the time. And when you are funny in improv, it’s almost like you’ve pulled off a real-time magic trick, so the laughs are generally pretty big.

Stand-up is different. Audiences are showing up expecting to laugh A LOT. They know that writing and rehearsal have usually been done. They know that every word has been deliberately chosen to generate laughs. And because everything you’ve prepared leads to a punchline, it’s very, very clear when and where audiences are supposed to laugh, and it’s very, very obvious when they don’t do it.

Plus, you’re up there all alone. In improv, if things aren’t going well or you’re having an off night, you’ve got a whole team of others to support you and bring a dead scene back to life. If you’re tanking doing stand-up, you kind of have to keep trudging through your material and hope it gets better.

Bottom line—it is much easier to bomb in stand-up than in improv.

So yeah, my mind is filled with worry about bombing in front of a live audience. Or forgetting my material.

Parental Nerves

I’m not just nervous about me, though. As a dad, I’m also nervous about Cedar performing live. I imagine how confidence-shattering it would be to fall apart on stage in front of an audience and REALLY hope her first time doing this is a positive one. This could be an evening of celebration and empowerment, or an evening of embarrassment and self-judgment.

A Week of Panicky Preparation

Between our last class and live show, Cedar and I spend a lot of time preparing our sets.

We huddle around the kitchen table, swapping out words, trying different turns of phrase, and riffing on alternate punchlines. I am very conscious that I haven’t spent such extended time doing something creative with Cedar since she was much younger, and I’m savouring it.

We both feel the pressure of the showcase, and we are trying to keep busy making improvements to our material to keep our nerves at bay. Cedar has added a few gems to her set about her ex-boyfriend, including a new punchline to her bit about getting a call from him in jail. I can’t wait to hear all this in front of an audience.

On the day of the show, we awkwardly rehearse in front of each other in the living room several times. For me, this is about burning the material into my mind and proving to myself that I can do the whole thing without any notes. I hope I can get it to the point where I know the material so well that I can focus on the audience and being reactive. At this point, I feel like we could each deliver each other’s sets because we know them so well!

Cedar and I talk about hitting certain words, pausing for effect at certain points, and a few other aspects around delivery. I am having a lot of fun doing this creative work with my daughter and I’m very aware of how unusual and special these moments are.

Soon, it’s time to leave the house. I am doubly nervous. I’m nervous that I’m going to bomb. And, as a dad, I’m nervous about Cedar’s performance, too. I REALLY hope it all goes well. #anxiety

It’s Showtime!

We arrive at the venue, and it’s no longer the bright and cheery class environment. The lights are down, music is playing, and there are about 60 chairs lined up for the audience. The comedians gather side-stage, and it’s hard to hide that we are all extremely anxious. It’s also clear that everyone is pulling for each other to do well tonight—I love the camaraderie of this group and how kind everyone is, despite having only known each other for a month.

Soon, audience members start arriving. Seats get filled. Cedar and I say hi to our family members and try to be social, despite our stomachs being filled with butterflies and our brains being filled with thoughts about remembering our material. There are several surprise arrivals, friends who saw the posts on social media and have showed up to support Cedar and me tonight. Heartwarming… and higher stakes to not bomb!

Before long, the house is packed and standing room only. Katie-Ellen gives us a pre-show pep talk and tells us her job is to get this crowd fully primed to bust a gut for each of us. It’s a great confidence booster! She heads up to start the show, and she delivers. She brings so much energy and charisma, and it’s clear that the crowd is here to have a good time and laugh.

Our first few classmates hit the stage, and they are great! I am mildly ashamed to admit that I have a hard time fully focusing on each set, because in my mind, I am panicking about remembering my own material and nervously hoping Cedar does well. I lean into the enjoying the comedy… and then drift back into worrying mode.

Suddenly, it’s Cedar’s turn. I give her a big hug, tell her to crush it, and she’s off to the stage and walks into the spotlight.

Cedar’s Performance

For me, as a dad, it’s like time slows down as soon as Cedar gets on stage.

I really want her to nail her set after all the preparation and hard work she has put into this class.

Early on, it is clear that she has won over the audience. They are starting to laugh before she even gets to her punchlines. When she hits the first big joke, about her graffiti artist boyfriend not being Banksy, but just being a d*ck who writes the word “Benzo” on bus stops, the room fills with laughter.

It is such a confidence booster for Cedar to get this first big collective laugh, and I can see her relax and lean into enjoying the rest of the set. Side-stage, I relax, too. She’s not only got this, she’s nailing it.

She wraps up a bit about her boyfriend calling her from jail with a new punchline, and again, huge laughs. You can hear people clapping as they are laughing!

She moves into her own naivete when her boyfriend’s parole officer suggests he is unsuited to work that involves being around other humans, and she thinks it just means he’s an introvert. Again, huge laughs!

At this point, Cedar is smiling and laughing on stage herself as she delivers the material. I can’t even tell you what an amazing experience this is for me, watching your daughter own the stage, with full support of the crowd, and having a great time doing it. My heart was bursting.

She cruises through the rest of her set with ease. The crowd cheers at the end when she shares that she is no longer dating this dude, and then she drops her closing punchline, which gets a final huge laugh.

Triumph!

She not only did it, she killed it.

She comes off the stage to huge high fives and hugs from her classmates. I give her a big hug. She is beaming.

I am in awe.

If you’d like to check it out yourself, here is Cedar’s full standup set:

Stepping Into The Spotlight

Quickly, I am back in panic mode about my own upcoming visit to the stage. A couple of our classmates are between Cedar and I, so I have more time to ruminate about things like:

• What if I bomb?

• Will I be able to be fully celebratory for Cedar if I’m personally crushed by bombing my own routine?

• What if I forget my material? What if I forget my material? What if I forget my material?

I briefly forget my opening and have to genuinely focus to remember how to start this thing that I’ve practiced dozens of times.

It’s a blur. Suddenly, Katie-Ellen is up on stage calling my name, and I’m up on the stage.

I take out the mic, put the stand at the back of the stage as we’ve all been trained to do, and try out a new, more personalized opening to the set based on Katie-Ellen’s recommendation. Instead of a “cold open” into a joke, I start by informing the audience that they are looking at my first-ever beard. Instant cheers and clapping! This is a great confidence boost off the top and I’m already grateful to Katie-Ellen for her advice and guidance.

Early on, I feel like I’m talking too fast and rushing through some of the lines, shutting down some of the audience reaction too quickly. I try to listen for reaction, pause, and resume as it’s dying. I get my first laugh on a Jason Momoa punchline about my beard. It feels good to hear big laughs!

I move into a dark Ernest Hemingway beard roast and get a mixture of laughs and groans, reminiscent of my Anthony Jeselnik-style joke that bombed in the class. I’m honestly okay with this because I like this joke, it’s my sense of humour, and it doesn’t feel like a “dad joke” to me. Still, I hope I haven’t lost the good vibes by delivering this one!

Needless to say, delivering your set on a stage, in a spotlight, to about 60 people is very different than doing it for Cedar in our living room. You can’t really see people because of the light in your eyes and because everyone else is in the dark, but I still try to move my eyes around the room and see individual people as I deliver the material.

I try out a new bit about how my external appearance hides the stupidity of what is going on in my brain with the analogy of a fancy leather briefcase… filled with crayon drawings of monsters and poop. It works!

I’m honestly feeling pretty good and much more comfortable and in the moment that I thought I would. There are real, honest-to-God laughs from the audience and, not gonna lie, it is a huge relief that allows me to relax and enjoy being up here on stage.

I go through some jokes about how the beard makes me look more dangerous, which includes a couple of bits of getting unmanly prison tattoos. In hindsight, I have a little tag at the end of one of them about intimidating people in the prison yard and gym lockerrooms that I should have cut—the original punchline landed and the tag kind of diluted it.

As I move through the rest of the set, some jokes land better than others, but it’s all happening so quickly that I just keep trucking along and enjoying the experience. Before I know it, I’m coming to the closing section. I tell a somewhat gross joke about injuring my wrist so badly that I required reconstructive surgery (which goes over shockingly well!), move into the betting pool my kids have about my sexuality, and wrap with one more punchline that goes over well. (You can check out the video below for the actual jokes…)

Wow.

Didn’t blank.

Didn’t bomb.

Felt comfortable on stage.

Had FUN doing it.

I return back to side-stage and high-five with Cedar. We both watch the last two of our classmates perform and they do a terrific job.

The night could not possibly have gone much better. I can’t believe it!

And even though I am mildly terrified to share this, here is my full standup set from the live showcase:

The Gift of This Comedy Class Wasn’t About Being Funny

After the show is over, Cedar is swarmed by friends and family, celebrating her performance. (I get lots of very nice feedback, too, but I am just soaking up Cedar’s triumph.)

Our family heads out for a post-show ice cream and recaps all the highlights of the night. Cedar knows she killed it on stage tonight and I can feel the amazing energy radiating from her, knowing she has done something really scary and delivered the goods. It is really special.

I have grown so much doing this course, from watching a room full strangers be vulnerable and transform into hilarious comedians in a month, to seeing all of us discover our own unique voices, and from rediscovering my confidence on stage to seeing my daughter find hers for the first time.

There are three whopper insights that I’m going to take away from all this, though.

Whopper Insight #1: The ‘Am I Funny?’ Verdict

I got an answer to question that was the impetus for this experiment: can I be funny, or was that TV executive right that I’ll never be funny. I feel like I proved to myself that I can still be funny, even at age 53. I didn’t embarrass myself. I got lots of laughs. And I had fun doing it.

So I'd like to keep doing comedy. Maybe open mic nights with Cedar? For fun. Because I genuinely enjoy the process of writing and performing.

That's enough.

Whopper Insight #2: The Surprising Empty Nest Magic

As this is the Midlife Field Guide and all, midlife is a weird and uncomfortable time to be a parent. When your kids become adults, you're not really 'parenting' anymore—at least not the way you did for two decades. As you enter your empty-nest phase, there is a mixture of excitement for your kids and your own next phase of life, but also a mourning. The most essential job of your life—the identity that defined you—is done. And it's not coming back.

I was wrong.

Writing jokes at the kitchen table. Rehearsing in the living room. Watching her find her voice on stage. Sharing a spotlight together. Doing this course with Cedar was one of the most magical father/daughter experiences I’ve ever had. And it came at a time when I thought magical parenting experiences might be over.

Doing stand-up with Cedar has given me new hope for what relationships and experiences can look like for parents and adult kids. It's not about parenting anymore—it's about doing meaningful things together as adults. Learning together. Taking risks together. Celebrating each other.

I'm officially inspired. I'm going to do more of this type of stuff with all my kids.

Whopper Insight #3: Passing the Torch

My daughter is funnier than I am. And I couldn’t be happier.

Comedy badge unlocked!

And Cedar—thank you for doing this whole project with me and letting me write about it. I hope it wasn’t too embarrassing to do all this with your dad. I can’t wait to watch your comedy journey continue!

Thanks to all of you for reading about our stand-up comedy adventures. I’m curious:

• Have you had any unexpectedly magical moments with your adult children? Experiences that made you realize parenting isn't over—it's just different now?

• Have you returned to any creative dreams you'd buried? What happened when you finally tried?

Let me know in the comments below!

A huge thank you to Katie-Ellen Humphries for making this entire experience so special. You’re a fantastic teacher and comedian! Thanks so much to everyone else in the class—it was a real treat to do this with all of you and share in your comedic journeys.

Steve

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

Subscribe now

My 23-year-old daughter, Cedar, and I have had just one week to write three minutes of original stand-up comedy. It has been stressful, anxiety-inducing, and also… lots and lots of fun. We are outside the venue, nervous. We both take a deep breath and head inside to perform our own original material for the first time.

What we don’t realize is that we are also doing something much more profound: we are finding our voices.

Welcome back to the Stand-Up Comedy Show: Part Two of the Father/Daughter Stand-Up Comedy Experiment. After a number of confidence-crushing experiences when I was younger, I am doing this experiment to find out if I am capable of truly being funny.

Here’s where we started. Here’s where we’re at… It’s week two of our comedy course with professional comic Katie-Ellen Humphries. We are lucky to have her teaching us: she is a regular performer and producer on CBC’s The Debaters, has a comedy album, and tours all over the place.

Everything Is Potential Material

Almost instantly after last week’s opening class, Cedar and I have new mindsets. We are looking around and seeing the world through a different filter: potential material. We keep interrupting each other in conversation to say, “Write that down! That’s a joke!” And I find myself frantically opening up my phone to write notes at all times of day, in all sorts of locations, as jokes, stories, observations, or bits pop into my head.

Together, Cedar and I have spent a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table, writing.

• Tennis Grunts: Professional tennis players are now all grunting vocally when they hit a ball, and wonder what it would be like if other sports or daily activities employed this strategy. Hitting a golf ball: “Ha-aaaaaaah!” Tying my shoes at age 53: “Ha-aaaaaah!”

• BBQ Dude Talk: At every communal BBQ, every guy is on the same script: ‘That looks good—what time should I come by? HAHAHA.’ Every time.

• Strava Posts: I also vent about the fitness social media app, Strava, which is like Facebook for exercise. I’m trying to figure out why so many guys use their workout titles to express their suppressed creativity.

  You see someone post, but instead of calling it “5k Bike Ride with Peter,” they title it: “Dipdy dip whirlies with Pig Boy.”

  And then there are the people who feel the need to track everything, not just workouts. I’m scrolling through my feed expecting to see marathons, and instead, I see:

  Activity: Washing Dishes Distance: 0.0 km Heart Rate: 94 bpm Calories: 14 Kudos: 0

Cedar and I write and write and write. And I second-guess everything, unable to choose what material to perform…

The Only Way To Do Comedy Is Your Way

At the start of one of the classes, Katie-Ellen shows videos of a variety of different comedians. They are nothing like each other. They don’t follow the same joke structures. They don’t have the same pacing, the same kind of delivery, or the same energy. Some are patient storytellers, building scenes and characters in the audience’s mind, while others do rapid-fire set-up, punchline bursts. Some are highly relatable and charismatic, while others are unusual oddballs who are fascinating to watch.

I’m pretty sure Katie-Ellen has a point in showing us all this: there is not a single way to be a comedian. In fact, it seems the best comedians have developed their own unique styles and approaches. And because of that, Katie-Ellen’s approach to teaching comedy is more about helping us find our own comedic voices than about learning and workshopping traditional joke structures. I greatly appreciate this!

I learn this lesson (again)—the hard way—at the start of Week Two…

Maybe Don’t ‘Steal Like An Artist’ With Comedy?

Katie-Ellen starts each class with a group conversation, sometimes with a creative prompt and others with a game or exercise. Last week, she asked us each to prepare one very short setup and punchline. So this week, we go around the room reading our short jokes. Many of them are legitimately funny!

Cedar is by far the youngest person in the class. I know she is finding it nerve-wracking, but she delivers a good bit about what it’s like to become a regular at your local coffee shop and the barista knows your name and favourite beverage. Then she reveals that she has the same relationship with her bank. She shows up, the teller smiles, greets her by name, and says, “So how’d you lose your debit card this time?” She nails it!

When it is my turn, I do not ‘find my own comedic voice.’ Instead, I feebly attempt a joke in Anthony Jeselnik’s unique style: shocking misdirection.

“Christmas Trees are a lot like puppies.

It’s so exciting to head out and choose the perfect one. And it’s so magical to bring it into your home. You dress it up and take photos of it, and you give it water and take care of it.

And then, in a few weeks, the novelty wears off, you forget to give it water, and it dies...(beat)

And then you dump the carcass in a recycling bin in the alley.”

My joke does not get the reaction I expect. There are several groans. I hear oohs and aahhs and other uncomfortable vocalizations from my peers. Yikes! (Maybe I’m NOT funny?)

It is an instant comedy lesson: an amateur attempt to imitate a world-class comic with decades of honing his style and voice is going to be… lame.

I’m no Anthony Jeselnik.

Safe Creative Feedback

Then we sit in front of the stage and, one by one, we go up the stage, grab the mic, and do our three-minute sets. Katie-Ellen suggests we bring our phones up on stage, turn on the Voice Memos app, and record our sets. This is a great way to hear what you ACTUALLY sound like and to hear the audience's reaction, so you can improve your material. She also gives every performer extensive notes and suggestions that are both constructive and kind.

I don’t think there is a harder task than giving and getting feedback on creative work. You want people to learn and improve their craft, and you also want them to feel good about themselves and their creativity. Katie-Ellen does an amazing job of bringing a bunch of strangers together, getting them to be very vulnerable in front of one another, and giving really terrific, empowering feedback. I know the comedy world can be mean and cold-hearted, but the culture Katie-Ellen has created in her class is the exact opposite, and I’m very grateful for it (for myself and my daughter!).

Cedar and I both wait until close to the end to get up on stage. She goes up just before me, visibly nervous.

She spends the entire three minutes roasting an old boyfriend of hers, while simultaneously making fun of herself for being blindly optimistic and missing massive warning signs that this dude was going to be a truckload of trouble. The huge contrast between her onstage cheeriness and the darkness of this guy and their relationship generates a lot of laughs.

The highlight joke in her set is when she discovers he is a graffiti artist and imagines that he is like Banksy, only to quickly discover that he’s just “a d**k who writes ‘BENZO’ on bus stops.”

BOOM. Katie-Ellen and the class love this joke. I am beaming as I watch my daughter perform and thrilled to see the response she is getting. Watching your daughter discover she's genuinely funny is one of the most unexpectedly moving experiences I've had as a parent.

Suddenly, it’s my turn. Even though this is a safe environment and there are less than ten peers in the room, I am very nervous.

I open with jokes about my dismal performance running my first-ever race, the Eastside 10km, some of which I work into my Midlife Field Guide write-up about the race. Then I do a bit about what I would do if I were a billionaire. It’s a very detailed description of how—with unlimited money—I would set up my entire life around… foot massages.

The running material definitely goes over better than the foot massage billionaire fantasy, which I later realize is because there aren’t really any punchlines—just a weird, vivid fantasy about masseuses in scuba gear rubbing my feet in a hot tub.

Katie-Ellen encourages me to embrace that I’m a writer and to own my personal turns of phrase and language choices. She also gives great advice about the power of doubling down on things like Dad-joke puns: when you really commit to something that could be lame (like puns), it becomes much funnier. It is really insightful and personalized advice.

Overall, it is so much fun to watch our varied cast of characters get up and do their stuff. Everyone truly is different. Every set has laughs. And some lines continue to stick with me because they are so funny.

One guy has brilliant deadpan timing and kills me. He starts his set by asking the audience, “How’s everybody doing?” All of us clap and cheer, or yell “Good!” He pauses, sighs, and says, “Must be nice.” SO GOOD!

Comedy Takes Over Our Brains… And Our Worldview

Katie-Ellen sends us home with upgraded homework: come with FIVE minutes of material for Week Three. She gives us the choice of either refining and extending our existing material, or writing a new set.

Cedar had such a good reaction to her set that she decides to keep honing her set, which is a great choice. I decide to keep writing and try to craft better material than my Week Two effort.

Cedar and I spend the week deep in comedy-land. I find myself thinking about jokes and material all the time. In the shower. While I’m walking. While I’m waiting in line at the store. While I’m driving.

When something unusual happens, my brain is suddenly trying to figure out if there is a joke or a bit or a funny observation to capture from it. It’s genuinely fun to be in this mindset because you’re seeing the world through a different lens. It’s like you’re suddenly a philosopher or anthropologist studying human behaviour, but with an attitude.

Insight alert!

Honestly, thinking this way brightens my day. It’s like finding your own creative interpretation of the weirdness of the world. Or finding funny stories in everything around you.

I’m pretty sure I am insufferable to be around during this time because I am constantly trying out new material on others, even if they didn’t always know I was doing it.

I’m pretty sure Cedar is doing the same thing. I can tell she is workshopping ideas by sharing them with others to see what kind of reaction she gets, and most of the time, she gets laughs. It is a real treat watching this.

Prepping For The Live Showcase

The next two weeks, the gang assembles back at Chill X Studio. We are in full preparation for our upcoming finale: a live showcase with a paid audience. Each of us will perform five full minutes of material during the showcase, with Katie-Ellen emceeing.

Each week, we go deeper. Not just into comedy, but into ourselves.

It’s clear that everyone is taking this much more seriously. A lot of work has gone into memorization, physicality, reworking sections of material, or creating entirely new material. Once again, it is a joy to watch each person’s comedic journey unfold week by week.

This may sound obvious, but everyone is drawing material from their own unique lives:

• The actors find ways to utilize their acting chops.

• The clown infuses her set with clowning material.

• The chef’s set is filled with amazing details about life in a restaurant.

Standup is a powerful way to tell your story and find your voice!

Cedar’s sets keep getting stronger. Her nerves become less noticeable with each week. She adds new details that bring the bits to life. And her sense of timing and delivery is really impressive. It is fair to say I am blown away watching my daughter find her voice on stage right in front of me.

Finding My Material By Looking In The Mirror

Like everyone else, my new set comes directly from my life. Everything is about being at midlife. Shocker!

I talk about growing my first-ever beard at age 53, which many of you are already familiar with. I have had so much negative feedback about it making me look old that I decide to open with a series of roasts… of myself.

Some of the anti-beard feedback jokes I try out don’t make it to the final showcase, including:

• “You look like Santa with an eating disorder.”

• “You look like the before picture in a Just For Men commercial.”

• “You look like the Dos Equis guy… if he was the LEAST interesting man in the world.”

• “You look like a reject from the X-Men mutant academy - half man, half skunk.” Which is nice because the beard has a white stripe… and it smells like something died inside it.”

I talk about how I used the beard to go undercover as a ‘real man’ but was worried I was going to be found out as an impostor. And I wrap with a series of examples of how, even with the beard, I’m not much of a “manly man.”

I really have fun with this set and decide to keep workshopping it to perform in the live showcase.

My worst fear is getting up on stage and blanking, so as we progress week to week, I’m trying to figure out how to reduce my material to bite-sized words so I can fit the set onto a little note card I can reference if I get lost. In the third week performance, I definitely need it. I briefly lose my train of thought and attempt to casually wander to the stool to have a glance at the card. It works!

Smart Notes From a Pro

Week after week, Katie-Ellen’s feedback continues to be great.

I am ashamed to admit that, as someone who once had a podcasting company and has worked in audio for a long time, I have a recurring issue with mic technique. I can’t seem to keep the mic close enough to my mouth. I’m like a modern day Larry “Bud” Melman!

Katie-Ellen also helps me identify the lines and concepts that stand out, like “I may be in a grown man’s body, but I’m still running little boy software.” She also has bang-on suggestions for re-ordering some of the beard roast jokes and suggests that I keep the material fresh by working in new roast jokes with each performance. This is such a fun suggestion!

She has one killer note that (foreshadowing alert!) works out well in the live showcase: change the way I start the set. At this point, here is my opening:

“You CANNOT go up to someone you don’t know and make fun of their physical appearance. It’s NOT okay to say, “Hey, your eyes are REALLY close together. You look like a caveman who hasn’t discovered fire yet.”

It’s NOT socially acceptable behaviour.

There is ONE exception to this rule: beards.”

And then I go into the beard roast jokes.

She suggests that I start with something more personal, about me and the beard, right off the top. It’s a great idea and I commit to figuring this out before the big showcase.

Finally, she tells me the set is fun because it’s clear I’m having fun delivering it.

This is a huge confidence builder heading into the big showcase!

The REAL Comedy Test Awaits…

It’s the end of Week Four. Cedar and I have invited friends and family to the finale, and so has everyone else in the class. I’ve even promoted the show on social media. There’s no backing out.

For the past month, I’ve been asking myself: Am I funny enough? In one week, I’ll finally find out.

It’s just going to be us, a microphone, a spotlight… and over 50 people expecting us to make them laugh.

And you’ll get to see the video. (Next time… on the Midlife Field Guide!)

GULP.

Thanks for reading—see ya next time!

Steve

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Welcome to The Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

Subscribe now

Experiment: Can Geoff challenge himself to revisit the things he’s hated for decades to see if those stories still hold true at midlife?

Have I ever told you how much I hate yoga?

I also hate taking classes. Group things are just not my thing. I’m not a joiner and never have been.

That goes for team sports too. But not only do I hate them, I’m also no good at them. Which makes me hate them even more.

And roller coasters? Hard pass. Nothing is worse.

I could go on and on about the things I hate. These hatreds feel foundational to who I am. I’ve carried most of them for decades. They’ve shaped me, and they’ve limited me.

Some of them I can trace back to the exact moment they were born. The stories still live in my body and feel just as real now as they did then.

When I was ten, my cousins took me on a roller coaster at Canada’s Wonderland that was famous for its massive drop. As soon as the ride began I became totally convinced that I was too small for the ride and that the harness would never hold me. I spent the rest of the ride in a full panic, praying that I wouldn’t get flung out. Forty years later I still hate roller coasters and haven’t been on one since.

For years I’ve also felt an aversion to signing up for any sort of class. In my early twenties, a personality test told me I wasn’t the type to naturally join things, that instead I needed to be invited into an experience in order to feel comfortable. It’s a story that I’ve been living by ever since. The irony is that the test itself was part of a course that I chose to take.

As for yoga, I’m married to a trained yoga teacher who taught for years, so I’ve had plenty of opportunities to embrace the practice. But for the most part it’s never felt like my thing.

A couple of decades ago I did finally follow her to a class. It wasn’t exactly beginner-friendly, but I was assured that no one would judge me.

From the first minutes of the class, it became clear that compared to me, everyone else had been practicing for what seemed like forever.

While everyone around me looked serene, I felt anxious. I spent the whole class watching other people and their perfect poses and concluding that yoga simply wasn’t my thing.

When I add up all these stories, all these things I hate, the list is way longer than I’m comfortable with. I like to think of myself as someone who is open to new experiences. I’ll try almost any food put in front of me. But somehow that adventurousness hasn’t extended to all the parts of my life. When I reflect now I realize that the root of all of these aversions is fear.

Over the years I’ve done my share of therapy, and I know these stories once served a purpose. But they may no longer serve the person I am now.

These stories have both shaped me and limited me. Not that I’m necessarily grieving all the roller coasters I’ve missed, but still. These myths were formed when I was a different person. I’m 51 now, and I’m starting to wonder if any of these “truths” are actually true for me anymore.

I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions (which I realize may also just be a story I tell myself…), but this year I’ve decided to challenge the narratives that have shaped me. To re-experience the things I “hate” in order to see if those stories are still true for who I am today.

A week ago, my wife was heading to a yoga class. Nothing was remarkable about this, until she paused at the door and looked at me. I like to think she saw something shifting in me. And before she left, she asked a question she hadn’t asked in decades: Did I want to come with her?

It may not sound like a big deal, but to us, it was. Yoga had always been one of those things she did alone. But this time, instead of defaulting to the story that I hated yoga, I paused. And then I said yes.

She was shocked. And even as the word left my mouth, my mind filled with all sorts of reasons for why it was a bad idea. But I managed to quiet them and ten minutes later, armed with yoga mats, we were walking down the street to a local studio.

At the front desk, we were greeted by one of the kindest faces I’ve ever encountered. She was thrilled it was my first class at the studio (I didn’t mention it was only my second class… ever.) She showed me around and, and as if reading my mind, she told me I’d probably see people moving in the class in ways that might not feel right for my body, and that was okay. I could do as much or as little as I wanted. Nothing I did would be wrong.

Inside the studio, my wife had saved us spots in the back corner, something that felt like a gift. In the corner I could be as invisible as I wanted to be.

The room was full of candles and soft music. About twenty people were there. Other than me and one other guy, everyone was female and at least a decade (or three) younger than me. I felt out of place instantly.

Then the teacher, Knox* (*not her real name, but it was definitely something like Knox) began. Her age (she was in her 20’s), her tattoos (she was covered in them), her many piercings, everything about her felt foreign to me. And then she started teaching.

And something shifted.

Like the woman at the front desk, she reminded us that we could experience the class from wherever we were in our yoga journey, that we should adapt every pose to what feels right.

At some point in the class she walked by me. She must have seen that I was clearly a beginner, and instead of telling me that I was doing something wrong or correcting me, she instead caught my eye and gave a small wink and a smile.

It was strange, but in that moment I felt seen. Surrounded by younger, more experienced bodies, I suddenly felt okay exactly where and who I was.

It was a feeling that is beginning to define how I approach the world at midlife. Spending less time in states of striving and comparison, and more ok with just being me.

By the end of class, my body felt loose and calm. For the first time in my life, I got it. And as we put our boots back on in the lobby, I heard myself say something I never expected: I could actually see myself coming back.

So yes, going to a yoga class may sound small. But to me this whole Midlife Field Guide project has never really just been about things like yoga, or roller coasters, or team sports. It is about noticing the stories that quietly run our lives and asking if we still want to live inside them.

I’ve spent decades shutting myself off from experiences based on a steadfast belief in these old stories. I feel a desire at midlife to rewrite them, or at the very least test them out to see if they are still true to the person I am now.

This week I said yes to a mat and a room full of strangers. Next week, who knows. All I know is this: I feel an opening to everything right now. My body and spirit have an insatiable craving to face this stage of life in a state of being fully awake. I am done letting decisions I made at ten, or twenty, or even forty decide who I get to be now.

My goal this year is to put as many of these deep-seated stories to the test as possible to see if they still hold up. Consider this part one :)

Midlife Book Giveaway Winners!

A huge congratulations to all the winners of our Midlife Book Giveaway. Congrats to Julia, Jill, Christian, Joanne, and Robyn, and an extra-big congrats to our grand prize winner, Lana, who’s taking home an entire midlife library.

Thank you so much to everyone who entered and shared their midlife goals for the year. Reading about all the incredible things our community is working on was truly inspiring for me and Steve. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, I highly recommend it. You can find them in the comments section here.

And if you see your name listed as a winner but haven’t heard from us yet, be sure to check your Substack DMs for all the details.

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

Subscribe now

Happy 2026, Midlifers!

On January 1st, I was ready to start the year with a fresh outlook. I popped on a podcast episode promising fresh insight into finding meaning in life—Arthur C. Brooks on the Tim Ferriss podcast.

I couldn’t make it through the episode. I had to turn it off halfway through.

I’m nervous to tell you why, because I’m part of the problem…

I’ve been a somewhat compulsive data/measurement/tracking productivity obsessive for much of my life. I have lived the “Quantified Self” to one degree or another for a long time. Counting steps. Tracking sleep. Optimizing workouts. Analyzing stats.

I’ve worn an Apple Watch every day for years and years and years. I got an Oura ring in 2020 and have worn it daily for almost 6 years now. I’ve had an unhealthy relationship with “productivity” and trying to get as much done as humanly possible every day. I have an endless backlog of tasks in my “To Do” lists, all organized in Kanban style on Trello and rooted in the David Allen “Getting Things Done” methodology. (This is why everything writes about being a recovering productivity addict resonates so deeply with me. Thank you, Oliver!)

Every day, through all these devices and systems, I have ended up with a series of targets, numbers, scores, or systems that, essentially, tell me whether or not I’ve had a successful day.

Over the years, I’ve become adept at “achieving” these types of successful days. There has been a major downside to this relentless tracking and optimization, though:

I have a really hard time relaxing.

Ever.

I always feel like I should be doing something—anything!—to move things forward, to get more things done, to raise the quality bar further.

And listening to Arthur C. Brooks talk to Tim Ferriss, I became deeply, deeply annoyed. I literally could not keep listening. And I knew instantly what I needed to do to start my year in a new, liberating way.

Stop. Measuring. Everything.

I’ve decided to spend January 2026 turning off every scoreboard in my life to see what happens.

Here’s why…

The Arthur C. Brooks Podcast Incident

January 1, 2026

Yesterday, I saw that Arthur C. Brooks was a guest on the Tim Ferriss podcast. As an author of the Midlife Field Guide and a fan of Brooks’ pandemic-era book, From Strength to Strength, I was curious to hear his thoughts on finding meaning in your life.

What I got is not what I expected or wanted.

I probably should have known better—right off the top, there is an ominous warning of what lies ahead. Tim tells Arthur, “Glad to see the vascularity in your arms is still visible even through the long sleeve shirt.”

Pardon?

The episode begins with an extended examination of Brooks’ morning routine, which could almost certainly pass as a parody of modern masculinity. I am going to summarize the episode up until the point I turned it off, and you can judge for yourself whether this is truly a path to meaning and happiness.

Arthur starts every day at 4:30 am with the Brahmamuhurta ritual, rising 96 minutes before sunrise to optimize his productivity and creativity. There is a detailed discussion of his hour-long workout and Arthur shares that “the most important room in my house is the gym.”

To make the most of every waking second (and with a 4:30 am wake-up, Arthur has more waking seconds than the rest of us), he maximizes productivity by stacking his thinking and exercise together, working out sans headphones. “That’s your most creative time,” says Arthur. “That’s like taking an hour-long shower. You get your best ideas if you work out without headphones.”

Brooks has logged every workout he’s done since his 30s. He is 61. He can track his own heart rate without a monitor, because “120 beats per minute is a really, really easy thing to ascertain, because I’m an old musician. That’s the speed of a Sousa march.”

Yes, Arthur! This sounds great. I will first study Sousa marches until I subconsciously absorb the 120 beats-per-minute cadence, and then develop the ability to match that pace to my own heart rate. That sounds much easier than wearing a heart rate monitor.

Arthur’s workout is followed by attending daily 30-minute Mass to connect with his spirituality, which he dubs ‘The Holy Half Hour.’ Then the nutrition begins. He ingests an unusually high dose of 15-20 grams of creatine a day, explaining that the first 5 grams are for “muscle protein synthesis or volumization of muscles” and the rest is to neurologically bank four hours of concentration, “to set myself up for optimal creativity.”

Even coffee has an unusual role in his life. He doesn’t use coffee to wake up, but to focus. The role of caffeine is “circulating adenosine to metabolize and to clear endogenously,” whatever that means. I think we can all relate when Arthur says he wants “plenty of open parking spots for the adenosine receptors, that I can then fill two to three hours after I wake up with caffeine.”

What does this mean? And what does this have to do with the meaning of life?

Brooks is a Professor of Happiness at Harvard. Yet this does not feel like a relaxed individual. It feels like someone who is confident they have life figured out, with every single second rigidly optimized for maximum yield. This feels like someone desperately trying to cheat death, a recurring and worrying theme in modern bro culture.

This is the quote that made me turn off the episode:

“I’m most comfortable when I’m sub-10 body fat.”

This is not repeatable behaviour for 99.9% of humanity. This is the sort of stuff that makes all of us feel worse about ourselves, not better. These are the examples that make the rest of us give up on happiness, healthiness, and meaning.

If I’m on the weirdly obsessive side and all this sounds impossibly unrealistic and unhealthy to me, I can’t imagine what this must sound like to people who are “normal” on the data/tracking/productivity scale.

TLDR: If this over-the-top shit is what we have to do to be happy, it’s just not possible… or worth it.

Miriam Toews on Living Forever

I have been reading Miriam Toews’ brilliant memoir, A Truce That Is Not Peace, and this jumped out at me as a perfect indictment of modern masculine culture in 2026:

“I think of the words written on the wall of the women’s washroom in the recreation centre at the park, Trinity Bellwoods, near my home. Read that to me, said my grandson.

Only assholes wanna live forever, I said.

Only assholes wanna live forever? he said.

Later, I saw a guy getting into his car across the street from me wearing a T-shirt that said, Assholes Never Die.”

Just sayin’…

It’s Not Just Arthur. It’s Everywhere.

There is something tangibly and toxically masculine about morning routines and conversations like this. It’s about trying to dominate and control elements that are, by definition, not controllable… like aging and death.

There is no post-death scoreboard to enjoy. You can’t ‘win’ life. In fact, I’m pretty sure that manically trying to ‘win’ life and conquer death guarantees that you’re actually missing most of your actual life.

And yet, part of the reason I had such a strong reaction to Brooks’ morning routine is that I recognize too much of myself in his ritualized attempts at immortality. Obviously, I’m not doing things at his level, though—people like Arthur keep pushing the bar higher and crazier to the point where it is just… impossible. And ridiculous.

I know I’m not alone. This type of content is like the Siren’s Song to so many Type A nutters like me. I was genuinely disturbed when I realized thousands of people are going to listen to the podcast and adopt these protocols as a new definition of success for their lives. They will assume that Arthur has life figured out and that by copying his morning routine, they will, too. And it won’t work.

In that moment, I realized that I never want to live by someone else’s scoreboard again. And, at the same time, I recognized clearly that I have been doing exactly that for a long, long time. All of it done in the belief that measuring and optimizing everything will make my life… better? And, ironically, it generally makes me feel worse about myself.

It’s exhausting. So I’m done. (For a month, anyway.)

I don’t mean to pick on Arthur. This stuff is everywhere. Our entire culture is obsessed with the optimization of everything. Everything is a scoreboard.

What Does This Have To Do With Midlife?

Many of you are likely starting New Year’s Resolutions that involve capturing, measuring, and analyzing data about your lives. It might be weight. It might be fitness levels. It might be words written daily for your novel. It might be your productivity!

Peter Drucker famously wrote, “What gets measured, gets managed.” It’s quoted all the time.

So if it matters, you should measure it.

Or… should you?

One of the core principles in my book, Earn It, is to Do the Opposite. And I am ready to Do The Opposite when it comes to ‘measure what matters.’

In fact, the full Peter Drucker quote is less well-known:

"What gets measured gets managed—even when it's pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so.”

Baboom!

My new mantra for 2026 and the focus of my first new experiment of the year is “Don’t Measure What Matters.”

My Desired Outcome

I don’t want every activity to be a means to an end. I’d like to just enjoy them while I’m doing them. I don’t want to judge every activity or everything I do through the lens of “Was it successful?” Or “Am I on track?” Or “Did I improve?” Or “How am I comparing to others?”

I want to just live my life and enjoy my activities without turning everything into a competition. I don’t want to evaluate every activity in my life through someone else’s scoreboard.

If something really matters to me, I don’t want to measure it anymore.

My Data, Not My Metrics

I have collected too much data for too long, in too many ways, about too many things. I used to think gathering as much data as possible was smart and helpful.

Now, I’m not so sure. None of these measurements is really of MY choosing. They are chosen by companies that want me to track these things. They want me to check my data every single day.

Their scores and scoreboards and dashboards and infographics and Year In Review data visualizations are all shaping my behaviour. Their scores are shaping my self-worth. Their scores are shaping my life.

When I pause and reflect, I realize that almost everything in my life has been turned into a competition or a game by companies eager to keep me using their products. And they have the power to determine how I feel about myself on a daily basis.

My sleep score stinks? I’d better rectify that and figure out why. Anxiety.

My Substack post is underperforming? I’d better figure out why and start questioning myself. Anxiety.

My heart rate is higher than my friend’s? I’d better stew about whether there is anything wrong with me physically and whether there is anything I should be doing about it. Anxiety. Shame.

The list of data that makes me feel worse about myself goes on and on.

I’m curious to find out what happens if I turn it all off for a month.

The Experiment: Arthur C. Brooks IS Making Me Change My Life

I turned off the Tim Ferriss podcast and knew exactly what I needed to do this January to kick off 2026 for the Midlife Field Guide.

No. More. Scoreboards.

I’m going to stop measuring… everything. (***Almost)

For the entire month of January 2026.

• No more steps to count.

• No more rings to close.

• No more sleep to track.

• No more follower counts to compare.

• No more open-rates to obsess over.

Questioning The Data

Most of the time, the data tells me what I already know.

Every single day, I wake up and see that I have had a high degree of restlessness in my sleep. Every single day, I get suggestions about how to reduce restlessness during the night. Nothing works.

So for at least six years, I have started every day feeling like I’ve failed at sleep and need to figure out how to fix it.

How has sleep become something that determines my self-worth? Why do I feel like I need to be ‘successful’ at… sleeping?

When the data is not the same as usual, there is rarely anything I can do about it, and there is rarely any change I need to make. (Looks like running a 10km race has lowered my ‘Readiness’ score the following day. Shocker!)

So if I’m learning nothing new and there is nothing I can do to change the data, why do I track it?

After years of daily data, my hypothesis is that I have already learned what I need to learn. My hunch is that the data is no longer driving better decision-making, and I should question why I continue to track it obsessively.

If the data makes me feel worse, is this capturing and analyzing actually having a negative effect on my life?

I’m not opposed to being curious about my health or well-being. But the volume of data and data-checking feels… absurd. Why not monthly? Or quarterly? Make sure I’m on track, without obsessing over it daily or hourly.

So no data. No tracking. No scoreboards.

If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the one wandering around mumbling to myself like a conspiracy theorist, “Don’t Measure What Matters!”

Day One - January 1, 2026

I am nervous to do this. I know this is incredibly lame, but I have done this for so long that it feels quite stressful to willfully create an empty gap in the years and years of data.

First day with no Apple Watch for years and years and years. My wrist feels empty and light. I twist my hand to look at the time and see only a tan mark where the watch usually resides.

First day with no Oura Ring since the pandemic. My thumb keeps looking for the ring to twirl, but finds only skin and a callus.

I am panicked and also feeling a bit liberated. Much like ending my Wordle streak last summer, it feels daunting and stressful to end a long streak and consistent habit… until you do it. After you break the streak, you realize that it’s not bad at all.

I took a long walk on New Year’s Day along the beach. For the first time in forever, I have no idea how far I walked, how many steps I took, what my average time/minute was, or anything else. I did not close my Exercise ring.

I walked because I enjoyed being outside by the ocean. Don’t measure what matters.

I went to sleep without my Oura Ring on for the first time in forever. I got up this morning and had no sleep score to check. I paid more attention to how I am feeling. I had an okay sleep, and I’m 99% sure the Oura Ring would have told me the same thing.

I slept because I was tired. I woke up because I was rested. Don’t measure what matters.

I played tennis and did not turn on my Apple Watch to track it for the first time in years. I have no idea if my Move ring is closed, how many calories I burned, what my average heart rate was, or anything else.

I played tennis because I love sports with friends. Don’t measure what matters.

And you know what happened by not measuring anything on Day One? Nothing.

It didn’t matter. At all.

No matter how I sleep, I will feel how I feel in the morning. My body will know what I am up for doing and what I don’t feel like doing.

Also, I’m having fun playing tennis, not using tennis as a means to some other end.

It’s early days, but I have a feeling this will be as fruitful and meaningful as my Phone Fight. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading—let me know if you have any suggestions for data and measurement to ignore this month.

Here's my challenge to any of you interested in this experiment: What's one scoreboard you could turn off this month? Just for January. Just to see what happens when you stop letting a company's algorithm determine whether you had a 'good' day. Hit reply or leave a comment with what you’ll stop measuring.

Also, we will be announcing the winners of the Midlife Book Giveaway soon—go leave a comment on this post if you want to be entered.

Coming up soon on the Midlife Field Guide… Part 2 of my Stand-Up Comedy adventure with my 23-year-old daughter and Geoff begins exploring activities he hated in his childhood. How will the first trial runs of comedy on stage go? And will Geoff find a way to enjoy team-based sports? Stay tuned!

Steve

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(***The one caveat this month. I have resumed running again, training for the Vancouver First Half marathon on February 8th. I am going to put on my Apple Watch for my training to know how far and how fast to run because I’ve never done this before and need help. 😜)

Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

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Hello friends,

Here at Midlife Field Guide HQ, we’re feeling pretty darn grateful.

Grateful that this newsletter has given us no shortage of excuses to take part in all kinds of weird and wonderful experiments at midlife. Grateful for the growth this project has experienced since we first launched into those experiments. And perhaps most importantly, grateful to you for reading and following along. This project has given us more than we ever expected, something we never take for granted, and we truly cannot say thank you enough.

So as a small gesture of appreciation, we’d like to give you a gift. Well, some of you anyway.

We made a list of five books that have influenced us on this journey, and we’re gifting them to members of this community.

Here’s how it will work. Below is a list of five books we genuinely love and want to give away. There are no product placements or contra deals here. These are simply books we think are so good that we want more people to read them.

To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment below describing the kind of experiments you have planned for midlife, are currently planning, or have already done.

And honestly, if that feels like too much, a simple “I want a free book!” will also do just fine.

We’ll collect all the comments and draw names at random. The first five names will each receive one of these books. The sixth name will receive all five books. An instant midlife inspiration library.

Here are the books we love, and why they’ve inspired us.

The Surrender Experiment
by Michael A. Singer
At some point early in his life Singer made the decision to say “yes” to whatever life put in front of him, even when it made no logical sense. This opened up a new way of thinking about trust, timing, and letting go. It’s a powerful reminder that some of the most meaningful chapters of life begin when we stop gripping the steering wheel so tightly, and it’s opened us up to the magic that life has to offer when we open up and let it.

Shift: 7 Mindsets for an Inspired Midlife
by Peter Reek
Midlife often gets framed as a problem to solve, but Peter reframes it as a series of seven mindsets to embrace. It’s meditative, calming, and reassuring, like listening to a wise friend share insights that you remember long after the conversation has concluded. You can feel Peter’s deep experience in coaching on every page—there are plenty of thought-provoking questions for readers to consider for their own lives. It helped us recognize and name what felt off, and more importantly, imagine what might come next.

How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum
by Keri Smith
This book feels like permission in paper form. It invites curiosity, play, and attention to the everyday, all things that tend to get squeezed out by adult responsibility. It inspired us to treat our lives as something to investigate rather than manage, and to remember that wonder is a muscle you can actually rebuild.

The Pathless Path
By Paul Millerd

We just found this book a few weeks ago, and eerily, it’s almost as if it was written with the Midlife Field Guide in mind. Millerd has created a compelling thesis about the power of leaving the ‘default path’ and instead exploring your own unique journey, or “the pathless path.” Instead of offering a one-size-fits-all solution, he invites you to run small, curious experiments on your own life—sound familiar? 😜 Get curious about why you think you need to do certain things in your life. Try this. Notice that. Adjust. Repeat. It is a wonderful eye-opener about the sheer scope of ways you can choose to live your life, and the power of interrogating the status quo.

How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters
by Michael Bungay Stanier
This book is a gentle but firm nudge out of paralysis. Instead of waiting for clarity, confidence, or permission, Bungay Stanier encourages action as the thing that creates clarity. It’s been hugely influential in helping us move from thinking about experiments to actually doing them, imperfectly and in public.

A Favour?

We’re incredibly grateful for the growth this newsletter has experienced over the past year. It’s deeply satisfying to see this community grow month after month. While we appreciate being part of the Substack ecosystem, by far the most meaningful growth has come from people recommending Midlife Field Guide to others in their lives.

If you’ve enjoyed the Midlife Field Guide in 2025, we’d love it if you shared it. Please tell a friend or a neighbour, post it on social media, or shout it from the rooftops. If you do, feel free to tag us (@themidlifefieldguide on Instagram or @midlifefieldguide on Facebook), send a screenshot, or let us know in the comments. We’d truly appreciate it.

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Happy holidays to all of you. Here’s to a juicy 2026 of midlife experiments and exploration!

XOXOXOXOXO
Geoff & Steve

Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

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Hello Midlifers!

One evening this fall, I find myself on a stage with a microphone, looking out at a small group of strangers that I’ve just met. With zero preparation or planned material, I have to start talking.

There’s an additional catch. I can’t leave the stage until I’ve been up there talking for two full minutes. This sounds like a short time. If you’re the one on stage, it feels like eternity.

This was the culmination of the first week of my stand-up comedy course.

My Complicated Relationship with Comedy

Some of you may know that since this newsletter launched, I have written about wanting to do comedy a lot.

• Three years ago, I wrote about how my comedic dreams were derailed by this meeting with a TV network president.

• Then I wrote about wanting to experiment with comedy again.

• Six months later, I wrote about this confidence-shattering experience with a famous Canadian stand-up/late-night TV host.

• Then I wrote about comedy again… and again in this chat with .

The last post included the following cartoon because… after several years of talking about becoming a man of comedic action, I had not done much more than a few fun TikTok and Instagram videos.

Guess what? I am proud to officially announce that I will never have this tombstone, because… I’m doing a stand-up comedy experiment. (Also, because I’ll be cremated… baboom! 💥)

Field Notes + The Bonus Surprise

Over the last several years, my 23-year-old daughter, Cedar, has become a huge stand-up comedy fan. I’d like to think that my own love of comedy has something to do with it, but Cedar has found her own comedians, her own comedy podcasts, and her own unique sense of humour.

Cedar is really funny.

Last Christmas, to celebrate being comedy nerds, I bought Cedar tickets for two nights at the Great Outdoor Comedy Festival in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. At the time, the shows were nine months away, in September 2025. As the year progressed, we got more and more excited about our big outdoor comedy weekend.

The Fates Intervene

Not for the first time, it felt as if fate was hard at work on The Midlife Field Guide. This past summer, just as I was considering how to conduct an experiment to change my relationship with my phone, I was serendipitously sent ’s 5 Week Phone Fight Course. I took the course, and it was amazing.

Then, in early September, just as the comedy festival was approaching, I started thinking about comedy experiment ideas. Out of nowhere, a friend DM’d me an Instagram post about a stand-up comedy course in my neighbourhood starting in two weeks. What?!?!

Even though I am not a particularly spiritual person, I am taking these coincidences as signs from the universe. (Please know that I am not manifesting these things through any sort of incantations or affirmations, a la The Secret!)

I signed up for the stand-up course immediately.

Then, I signed Cedar up, too.

This was going to be the ultimate father/daughter experience.

We both got to see a raft of unbelievable professional comics right before the course started: Whitney Cummings, Bert Kreischer, John Mulaney, Nick Kroll, Mike Birbiglia, and Taylor Tomlinson. It was like we threw ourselves into a PhD crash course of world-class comedy. We were chock full of inspiration right as the course began.

The Experiment

Cedar and I will take Katie-Ellen Humphries’ stand-up comedy course. There are four two-and-a-half-hour classes, with a stand-up showcase in front of a live audience in the fifth week.

The experiment is to find out if I can be funny.

It’s also to see if my adult daughter and I can have an amazing time together doing something terrifying.

NOTE: This is not a normal father/daughter activity, like going to a concert together… or painting penguins. This has the potential to be horrifically embarrassing for one or both of us.

GULP.

The Hypothesis

I am going to be very, very nervous doing this. Not just because it’s a class full of strangers, but also because my daughter will be part of the course, too.

I’m very nervous that I’m going to discover:

• I’m too old to be funny

• I’m too boring to be funny

• I’m too un-traumatized to be funny

• And, worst of all, I’m just… not funny

My biggest fears are about doing this with Cedar:

• What if I have a great time, but Cedar ends up having some of the negative experiences I had when I was younger?

• What if I bomb on stage in front of an audience… and Cedar?

• What if my material is gross, inappropriate, and super awkward for my daughter to hear? (Teaser: this 100% happens and will be revealed in a future newsletter)

On the flip side, what if it goes well? For both of us?

It might just end up being the coolest father/daughter thing we ever do.

It might also end up as an incredibly awkward shared experience that alienates Cedar from her weirdo father.

I genuinely don’t know how this experiment will play out. What I do know for sure is that I’ll regret it if I don’t try this and find out what happens.

Observations

Meet The Comics

Cedar and I head down to Chill X Studio for the first class. We meet several other nervous-looking people as we head in. Cedar is by far the youngest person in the class, and I am not the oldest. Shocking!

The instructor is Katie-Ellen Humphries, a well-known Canadian comic who is a regular performer and producer on CBC’s The Debaters, has a comedy album, and tours all over the place.

She starts the class with introductions. The class is an awesome mix of people: actors, a chef, a clown, a balloon-animal artist, a musician, and more.

Yay! Boo!

We play a game called “Yay! Boo!” We go around the circle of chairs in order, and one person says something positive, after which the rest of us yell, “Yay!” Then the next person has to turn that positive thing into something negative, cueing us all to yell, “Boo!” For example:

“I spent the weekend soaking up the sun at the beach.”

“Yay!”

“Now I’ve got a discoloured mole on my face.”

“Boo!”

Even better is the reverse round, “Boo! Yay!” where one person starts with something bad and the next has to find something good about it.

"I got kicked out of school for using A.I. in an exam.”

“Boo!”

“But I used an A.I. lawyer to sue the school and get re-admitted.”

“Yay!”

This is a great way to get all of us thinking about creating ‘turns’—twists that an audience isn’t expecting. This is what laughs are made of.

Mic Technique for Dummies

Then Katie-Ellen gives us something I wasn’t expecting: a lesson in microphone technique. It is surprisingly useful!

For a stand-up, the microphone signifies status. If you have the mic, you have the power. Having a microphone stand in front of you weakens that power, so unless you decide to read from notes, most stand-ups immediately move the mic stand to the back of the stage, where it is out of sight and out of mind. We’ve all seen this move in pretty much every stand-up show or special ever, but I’ve never recognized the power of this ritual before.

We all get up and practice introducing ourselves, removing the mic from the stand, and putting the stand at the back of the stage. I instantly start feeling like a real comic. Who knew that a simple exercise like this could be so empowering?

Two Minutes of Terror

We round out the first evening with pure terror. Everyone has to go up on stage with no prep and talk for two minutes solid without stopping. Katie-Ellen sets a timer on her phone, and you can’t leave the stage until the alarm sounds.

As the first few people go up, I try to stay present and focus on their performances, but my mind keeps trying to plan something to do when it’s my turn. I know from doing improv when I was younger that the more I try to plan something, the worse it will likely be. Yet it’s still hard to stop my brain from planning as it desperately tries to avoid being embarrassed in front of everyone.

Cedar goes up on stage before me, and I can tell she is mildly terrified. She tells me afterwards that she thought she might freeze and “be unable to form words.” She had vivid visions of everyone staring at her in total silence. I confide in her that I had the exact same fears.

Once she gets up there, though, she quickly finds her groove and talks all about the inanity and drama of Vanderpump Rules for two minutes. I am beaming seeing her up there on stage.

In fact, I am so engaged with Cedar doing it that my brain stops planning and plotting. This was helpful because as soon as Cedar is done, I suddenly find myself up on stage. Gah!

Okay. Play it cool, loser.

Take out the mic. Say hello.

Move the mic stand to the back of the stage.

And… start moving your lips…

I know a lot of comics talk about things that bother them, so I decide to unload about how much my elderly neighbour makes me nuts.

I talk about how his car alarm went off at 4 am the night before, and he never went out to turn it off. Katie-Ellen’s timer has not gone off.

I vent about how he continually parks in my spot, making it impossible to charge my car’s battery. The timer has still not gone off.

I rant about how he leaves his recycling container uncovered on his back porch, filled with unwashed dog-food cans. Crows fly in and pluck out the dirty tins. Why does this affect me?

Crows are smart. They’ve figured out that if they wedge the dirty dog-food tins in the eavestroughs on MY roof, they can eat the chunks in peace. And because this is Vancouver, those cans fill up with rainwater. So every few weeks, I’m on a ladder, pulling out wedged tins, getting showered with putrid, cold dog-food water.

Suddenly, the alarm goes off, and my two minutes are up. I did it. Holy moly, did that feel like an eternity waiting for the alarm!

I actually feel disappointed that I couldn’t fully finish my Crow Dog-Food Tin story. I also feel a rush of adrenaline from being up on stage that I haven’t felt in a long time.

The Week One Debrief

As Cedar and I head home, we are both buzzing with excitement. She tells me she was so glad that it went well because she would have been “so embarrassed if my dad was the only person that found me funny.” The best!

We are already looking ahead to Week Two. Our homework? Write three original minutes of material to deliver on stage in one week’s time.

We are both terrified and thrilled to get going.

What did we write about? How did our first official “sets” go?

That’s coming up next time… on the Midlife Field Guide! 🎤🤪🤮

The Shift Sessions Talk

While this is definitely not stand-up, I did get some laughs during my first-ever talk about The Midlife Field Guide. It took place at ’s epic book-launch event, The Shift Sessions, and I had so much fun doing it. Here’s the video of the talk—I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for reading! In addition to the next parts of the stand-up comedy experiment, and I are planning a year-end Midlife Field Guide giveaway that we’re excited to share with you soon.

Steve

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide

One year. Two Gen X friends. Countless personal experiments. Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?

(A project from The Creativity Guild)

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Hello Friends -

As some of you know, this June marks my and my wife Suz’s 25th anniversary.

Years ago, we thought it would be hilarious if for our 25th anniversary we put on a full scale amateur production of Fiddler on the Roof, starring us, and then forced all of our family and friends to watch it. I wrote about it here and here.

Neither Suz or I have any experience putting on a theatrical production, let alone acting in one. But luckily we happen to be surrounded by people who do. A few weeks ago we gathered eight of the most talented people we know to help us out. This truly is an extraordinary group, made up of writers, directors, choreographers, singers, composers, all incredibly accomplished and they all very generously agreed to spend a Saturday afternoon listening to where we are at.

Suz and I felt pretty good about our vision so far. We had rewatched the movie, and along with one of our kids, we pulled together a structure for what the show could look like. Realizing early on that a full scale production would never be possible, we envisioned our end product as a Fiddler On the Roof inspired variety show. We would keep all of our favourite songs, and in a very approximate fashion, we would tell a condensed version of the Fiddler story with highlights from the three hour production in just under an hour.

We had worked out our most meaningful and memorable scenes and we mapped out a few show stopping numbers that were guaranteed to get the room laughing. We also started the casting process which included ringing up friends and family in order to rope them into our plans.

When the day arrived and our league of extraordinary theatre professionals gathered in a circle in our living room, I was overcome with emotion. This slightly hair-brained idea had suddenly become very real and the emotional weight of it hit me. This was no longer just me and Suz’s weird little project, but something that this amazing community had now gathered together to bring to life.

I began to speak and my eyes welled up. I quickly abandoned my prepared opening remarks and instead spoke words of gratitude from my heart.

We collectively took a moment to ground ourselves in what we were about to do, and then Suz and I launched into describing our vision. Scene by scene, we shared the plan for a fairly complicated production that included a cast of many, loads of choreography, and a live band. We were quite tickled by what we presented, and half an hour later, after talking through our vision, we opened the floor to questions.

There was a polite silence. And then someone spoke up, “It’s great but It’s not quite what we thought it would be…”

“What did you think it would be?” we asked.

“Well, we thought that it would be more of your story. Not the actual story of Fiddler on the Roof.”

My stomach dropped. We had already created these vivid images of the event in our minds and receiving this feedback from our assembled team was disorienting.

Then someone else spoke up. “I’m glad you said that,” they started, “because I feel exactly the same way, but I was too afraid to say anything.”

The confusion around what we were pitching was unanimous. The consensus was that it needed to be our story. No one expected (or wanted) us to celebrate our anniversary with a mediocre amateur production of Fiddler on the Roof. It soon became clear that we needed to shift away from learning to sing our favourite songs and memorizing lines from the play, and instead use Fiddler as a framework to tell the story of our 25+ years relationship.

I didn’t know what to say. After being jolted by what felt like a sizeable rejection, it became obvious. They were right. I had been hiding behind the myth that we were essentially doing this as a lark, when instead this event could be personal, significant and incredibly meaningful.

As of this June I will have been married to my wife for 25 years. We met when we were both 22 years old. There have been moments over the years that have been ecstatic, with my heart bursting out of my chest with love for her and the life we have created. There have also been times that have been incredibly hard. Times that took serious work to come back to each other and times when I felt like throwing in the towel and splitting up our assets.

The reward I feel in my heart right now is a true love and admiration for the complex and wildly imperfect life that we have built together. I know myself so much better than I did when we were married in 2001. And I know Suz better too, including her many gifts and struggles. We’ve raised two wonderful kids, and we’ve matured in our careers and in the process of adulting, but we also still love to play. Our anniversary Fiddler event will be uniquely us, whimsical and fun. And it will be so much more than a punchline.

As our friends said goodbye, we felt so much clearer about the project. The show is not about pulling off a ridiculous stunt. It is about reflecting on our life together and giving it a celebratory and theatrical shape. It is a gift to ourselves after twenty five years and a chance to share our story with the people we hold dear.

Our next deadline, given to us by our incredible team of advisors, is to have a full script for the event prepared by January. Our current page count on that script: zero. But we’ve got some ideas. Stay tuned…

Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
Subscribe for free!

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Hello Midlifers!

Many of you might be relieved to know that this is the final instalment of the Beard Experiment, where I have been growing my first-ever beard at age 53. I am going to tell you whether I’ve decided to keep it or shave it, and why.

A while ago, I was told that someone commented (behind my back), “How much can someone possibly talk about a beard???” It turns out, the answer is that I can talk about a beard a lot because it has been a shockingly impactful experiment. And as it turns out, the Beard Experiment is not really about the beard itself at all.

In part one, Confessions of a Beardless Man, I explored the midlife identity issues that led me to finally ‘let it grow.’ In part two, The Summer I Turned Hairy, I detailed the highly entertaining reactions to various stages of facial hair growth, including my own family roasting my beard at length.

The Data

• The beard is officially 200 days old TODAY. 200 days!

• I’ve purchased one beard brush and one beard trimmer.

• The beard has been trimmed three times by Mike and Marvin at Main Barbers and approximately 12 times by my new beard trimmer.

• I’ve gone through one small bottle of beard oil.

• I have been called Santa seven times. Papa Smurf twice. Dumbledore once.

• I’ve been told I look like famous tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou once. Mandy Patinkin twice.

• I have been told it makes me look old more times than I can count or remember.

More Data: The Tribe Has Spoken

I included a poll at the end of Part Two asking for your input on the future of my face.

As of this writing, the results are clear: the beard wins in a landslide. (Also, I’m pretty sure that the 15% of people voting for a return to a clean shave included multiple votes from both my parents…)

Observations: It’s Not About The Beard. It’s About Identity.

I’m still figuring out who Midlife Steve is. However, I do know this. Midlife Steve is going to be a departure from my previous incarnation as Striving Type A Steve. I really was a clean-cut, LEGO Business Man clone. Proof? This has been my profile photo for over a decade:

I showed up, tried to offend no one, had a short haircut and friendly demeanour, and busted my butt to try and prove my worth and achieve security of one sort or another. I have been a people pleaser my whole life. I have been a rule-follower my whole life. Nothing filled me with more hot shame than failing at something or getting in trouble.

And now? It’s not like I’m suddenly a goth anarchist, that I have lost empathy for others, or have decided to live in the woods.

I will admit, though, that I find myself questioning a lot of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.

I recently wrote about the Three Midlife Questions I’ve been asking myself, and it’s been an incredibly powerful exercise. It’s made me realize that there are parts of myself that I have buried or hidden for fear of judgment or not being ‘normal.’ It may be obvious to a lot of you who only know me from this newsletter, but I really enjoy expressing my creativity.

My childhood memories are filled with drawing, writing, storytelling, and making stupid home movies. I have a degree in Literature. I spent most of my career in the media.

A funny thing happened, though. I traded creative work for managing creative teams. Then I co-founded a podcasting company that helped other organizations and brands learn to make shows filled with Creative Bravery. I became the business development and strategy guy, selling and teaching creativity instead of practising it.

As I left the ‘doing’ of creativity and pursued ‘leading’ creative teams, my media consumption changed enormously. I stopped reading fiction for years and instead went on deep dives into productivity, entrepreneurship, leadership, culture, change management, and all sorts of other non-fiction. I basically created my own version of an MBA so I could get better at leading teams and, eventually, a company.

A while ago, I wrote about a moment of career revelation:

At lunch, a friend complimented me on my entrepreneurial instincts and without thinking about it, I said, “I’m not really an entrepreneur. I am honestly an accidental entrepreneur. I’m really a Creative who needed to find a new business model to be able to do the work I really love doing and that I’m good at.”

Wow.

As soon as it left my mouth, something shifted. “Accidental entrepreneur” instantly resonated. It doesn’t mean that I’m not an entrepreneur or that I’m not good at it, but it did hit home that being an entrepreneur is not the thing that drives me intrinsically. I didn’t dream of “being an entrepreneur” when I was kid. I dreamed of being on SCTV or Saturday Night Live. Or writing books like Kurt Vonnegut or John Irving.

Since then, I’ve thought a lot about that lunch conversation.

And since hitting a bunch of midlife transitions, I’ve thought a lot about how to reconnect with that creative person at a deeper level.

This Midlife Field Guide project is a massive attempt to do just that. The writing, the multimedia storytelling formats I’m playing around with on Instagram, the videos I’m starting to make, the talks I’ve been starting to give about midlife… it all feels like I have re-entered a major groove of creativity that is deeply aligned with how I’m wired.

It feels really, really good.

Congrats, Creative Guy! (WTF Does This Have To Do With Your Stupid Beard?)

I promise this is still all about the beard… and about more than the beard. In reconnecting with my creative identity, I quickly realized something else that is very important.

I’m kinda done with fitting in for the sake of fitting in. My clean-shaven, short-haired look is such a powerful visual symbol of that identity.

And I’m done with it.

Which brings us back to the beard.

The beard is not a beard.

It’s a symbol that I’m not the same guy I was before the beard. It’s a symbol (and constant reminder) that I’m embracing a new version of myself. I’m giving myself permission to be uncomfortable. I’m giving myself permission to be different than who I’ve been in the past. I’m giving myself permission to be okay with negative feedback or people who prefer the previous version of myself.

The beard is my way of telling everyone that this is Creative Midlife Steve, and I’m no longer good ol’ Type A LEGO Business Man Steve.

I still don’t recognize the guy in the mirror with a beard. And I like that! I’m enjoying getting to know him. Every time I see myself, it’s a visual reminder that I’m inhabiting a new version of myself, and it’s kinda exciting.

I’m not the only one not recognizing the new guy. My step-daughter, Charlotte, has been bang-on in her roasting of the beard and her observations about how my internal wiring manifested itself in my consistently tight personal grooming.

She told me it was highly confusing for her to see me with a beard because I never have a hair out of place. I have always gotten my hair cut very regularly. I’ve always had the exact same short haircut. And… I’ve always been clean-shaven.

And suddenly, she is discombobulated because all that has changed. She said it’s like I’m suddenly a different person and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

YES, Charlotte! This is exactly why I’m doing it!

Embracing Aging Instead of Avoiding It

Charlotte also castigated me for making myself look older. She said that I have smooth, unwrinkled skin and that it makes no logical sense to cover it up with white beard hair that makes me look ancient.

Over the last 200 days, there has been so much feedback about how much older the beard makes me look. I waffled back and forth about whether I should shave it so that I wouldn’t feel old, but I recently had an epiphany.

So what if being clean-shaven makes me look young? I’m fifty-three! As someone who has looked a bit like an overgrown schoolboy for most of my adult life, maybe it’s time to embrace looking older instead of attempting to stave it off as long as possible.

These days, it doesn’t even feel bad to hear that I look older. It almost feels like… I’ve grown up. (Which is ridiculous at 53.)

The Beard Is A Metaphor For Midlife

This whole experiment, which sounded initially like a stupid stunt, has turned out to be quite meaningful and transformational.

I’m now going to reach even farther into the layers of deep beard meaning…

The beard has become a symbol of this whole Midlife Field Guide project for me.

As you will soon find out, most of the material I developed in a stand-up comedy course was about the beard. The beard featured prominently in my talk at ’s Shift Sessions event. It’s because the beard is, in many ways, a metaphor for the midlife journey.

Midlife is a transition, full of change. To use ’s metaphor, I feel like I am emerging from my Midlife Chrysalis, changed. Instead of transforming from a worm into a beautiful butterfly, though, I am emerging from my chrysalis looking older and, according to my father, “less attractive!” 😜

It takes courage to change how you appear to others and how you appear to yourself. It’s not an instant change either. It takes time, and there are different stages of growth.

When you first start growing a beard, the transition begins. It’s subtle stubble at first, but quickly people begin to notice that you’re different than who you were before.

This attention paid to your changing appearance is uncomfortable. The beard growth itself is uncomfortable and itchy. Skin gets irritated and red.

Soon, though, the beard starts to come in and take shape, much like the new midlife “you” starts to get increasingly comfortable the more you explore it and live in it day-to-day.

Some people get it and like the new beard. Some people don’t get it and want the old version of you back. So it is with midlife.

The beard is a journey. It’s trying on a new identity. It’s dressing up as a new version of yourself. And while the beard journey shifts your exterior appearance, the midlife journey transforms you internally.

At the end of the day, you get to decide what you think. You get to decide which version of you lives on to see another day.

Revisiting The Hypothesis

Here’s what I predicted back when I started this experiment in May, along with the actual results:

• I think I will have a meaty goatee, complemented by hideously patchy hair bits on the side of my face. ❌ Shockingly, I can grow a full beard.

• I think it will be embarrassing and uncomfortable, especially when it’s growing in ✅ 100% accurate.

• I think I will not feel professional ✅ Very accurate. I felt so weird popping on Zoom calls or running into clients or colleagues for the first few months.

• There is no possible way that I will look like the cool, Robert Redford-like Chill Mountain Man in A.I. Option 4, but that’s what I want my first beard to look like. ❌ I look way more like Chill Mountain Man than I ever expected. Nice work, Chat GPT!

• I predict that most of my family, but especially my mother, will HATE the beard with a passion ✅ 100% accurate. My mother, father, and step-daughter, Charlotte, all disapprove of the beard (especially my mother, as predicted!)

• I predict I will not like it and won’t keep it. ❌ After reading this far, you will likely not be shocked to learn that I have enjoyed the beard more than I ever thought.

  ---

Conclusion

I’m choosing Beard Steve.

I’m choosing the creative guy who was buried under layers of productivity, management, and entrepreneurship thinking. I’m choosing the guy that you’re reading right now, because this feels like the real me without filters.

Does Beard Steve look older? According to Charlotte, and many, many others… absolutely. Do I look like I just wandered out of the woods? Maybe. But for the first time in my life, I’m not trying to look like the person I think I should be. I’m just looking like who I am right now.

And if that guy gets mistaken for a mall Santa a lot in the next month? I can live with that.

Beard Badge unlocked!

I’m off to get a new profile photo.

See you in the comments,

Beard Steve

What Is Your ‘Beard’?

What is the change you’ve been secretly wanting to make, but you’re afraid it’s too ‘weird,’ too ‘old,’ or too different from who you’ve always been? Whatever it is—dyeing your hair, changing up your wardrobe, or digging into a dream you’ve been putting off—what would happen if you let it grow?

It might itch at first. You might get some weird looks from people who know you best. But after a while, you just might like who you see in the mirror.

Final Pitch for Movember!

If you’ve enjoyed #beardmania this month, please consider donating to the Midlife Field Guide’s Movember page. It’s a terrific cause, and we’d love to reach our fundraising goal with your help.

As if writing and making videos about facial hair for a month isn’t enough, I also got my prostate checked for Movember, which is very important for those of us over fifty. (For a future experiment, I’m doing a bunch of preventative medical testing with the amazing team at Georgia Healthcare in Vancouver, and they graciously included the prostate exam.)

Please donate here. Thanks for your support!

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year. Two Gen X friends. Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?
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Hello, Midlifers!

I have been waiting patiently for Movember to roll around so that I could talk more about The Summer I Turned Hairy. I have grown my first beard at age 53 and it’s transformed me outside… and inside.

Trust me. I know that growing a beard does not sound like a life-changing experience. However! Consider this:

• How often do you get a chance to radically change your physical appearance, to the point where many people don’t even recognize you anymore?

• What is it like to have tons of people providing feedback about your face… directly to your face?

• How often do you get a chance to bring to life some un-lived version of yourself to see how it feels?

• How does it feel to do something that you’ve always wondered about, but have never had the courage to actually commit to doing?

The beard has been all that, and more. Here’s how it went…

Diary of a Wispy Chin

Stage 1: Stubble

Thursday, May 15, 2025 is the day I decide to stop shaving and start the Beard Project. I don’t tell anyone, not even my wife. Very quickly, I start getting comments about the scruff on my face. This is because, my entire life, I have shaved regularly and had a short, neat haircut. My children call my look “LEGO Business Man” and it’s not a compliment.

My wife, Debbie, and my son, Dawson, both like the idea of the beard. My daughter, Cedar, and step-daughter, Charlotte… not so much. Charlotte is emphatic.

“Get rid of it! It’s all WHITE! It makes you look SO OLD!”

Quickly, the stubble becomes itchy and my skin is irritated and red. I buy beard oil to see if it will help. It does not.

Soon, it becomes obvious that some areas are growing faster than others. The goatee is coming in hard and fast, while the sides of my face are thin and patchy, like a sickly lawn desperately in need of water and fertilizer.

Even though it’s unkempt and patchy, I definitely look less child-like and significantly older.

This is the stage when I start getting unsolicited beard advice from other men. The number one piece of advice? Get a beard trimmer. On May 25th, my beard trimmer arrives. However, I am afraid to use it. I have no idea what I am doing or what settings to use, and I don’t want to do something dumb and look a complete idiot in public. So I just leave it in the box.

This decision leads to Stage 2 of the Beard.

Stage 2: Chaos

The consequence of not using the beard trimmer is that my facial hair is getting unruly. The bottom of my neck looks like a Rorschach test—random patterns of hair and skin that you could probably use to analyze your personality.

I become much more self-conscious about the beard. I have a business meeting and I am worried that my scruffy appearance will imply all sorts of negative things about me. “This guy can’t even manage a beard… how’s he ever going to do anything professional?”

This is also when I reveal my beard to the person who I know will hate it the most of all: my mother. She loathes beards. This has probably subconsciously deterred me from growing a beard so it is particularly exciting to reveal the beard to her with no advance warning.

My mother will be even more disappointed in me for posting this video of her reaction:

I don’t know if there will ever be a better quote than this one from my mother:

“You don’t look like my son.”

My father was not impressed either:

“It doesn’t enhance your looks. It detracts from your looks. I’m not being rude. I’m just being honest. We’re just being helpful. Do you want us to lie?”

I am increasingly self-conscious. Other people are definitely noticing. It’s a distinct change from what people expect of me, which seems to be “clean-cut man-child nerd.” Maybe now it’s “unkempt man-child nerd?”

Also… the bottom of the moustache is now getting in my mouth. I am getting yoghurt and sauces in my moustache and goatee. At mealtime, I feel like a farm animal at the trough.

Stage 3: The Trim

I need help. Desperately. I go to my trusted barber, Mike Shamoon, at Main Street Barbershop here in Vancouver. I tell Mike this is my first ever beard and I have no idea what to do. We have a fantastic conversation about beards while he cuts everything back and gives me a proper beard line, below which everything is shaved clean.

The beard line is a huge strategic decision. It’s like giving your beard a personality. Some beard guys are hard-core stubble-and-ballcap types with sleeve tattoos and pickup trucks. Some beard guys are hipsters and musicians with big, beefy, wild beards that complement their retro consignment wear. Some beard guys are immaculate stubble guys in designer suits. And some beard guys have a pretentious air, like they are professors or wizards or can’t wait to have a long puff on an old-fashioned pipe.

What kind of beard guy am I? I don’t even know!

Mike helps me choose something that is slightly shorter on the sides, slightly longer in the chin, and a pretty clean neck. After he’s done, I’m confident that this is a great beard line for me.

Soon it’s all done and I leave my first beard trim with strict instructions from Mike. I have to start shaving semi-regularly again, shaving down only (not up and down!), and sticking with the new beard line he’s created for me. I feel like I’ve just had a lesson in adulting and I don’t want to let Mike down.

You can watch all the nail-biting excitement of my first beard trim with Mike here:

And just like that, I’m suddenly now a comfortable beardo with an actual beard that I’m maintaining.

Stage 4: The Full Beard

I’ve survived Beard Puberty!

Despite the odds, it turns out that I can grow a pretty meaty beard. I am gobsmacked. People around me have been shocked, too.

“That’s a full-on beard!” a friend shouts at me over Zoom this week.

I look in the mirror and I can barely recognize myself anymore. The beard has changed the shape of my jaw line. I feel like the horse in the old joke, “A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, why the long face?”

Apparently, I’m not the only one finding my new appearance jarring. I got this text from my good friend, Chris:

”Dear God! You look like a different person. I feel like the kid who sees their dad with a beard for the first time and is freaked out.”

This summer, on vacation, I pop by to say hi to a friend I haven’t seen in nine months. She literally does not recognize me and thinks I am an intruder.

It’s still so odd for me to have this thing on my face. My hands touch it, stroke it, and pat it unconsciously, like it’s a small pet or Tamagotchi that I’m in charge of keeping happy and healthy.

Now the question is what to do with it. Am I a beard guy now? Or is this just an experiment? How long do I want this thing to get? Or do I just want to go back to smooth-baby-faced Steve?

It feels like I’ve invested a lot of time and effort into the beard so far and I’m reticent to just shave it all off too soon.

However, it’s very hard to decide whether to keep it. Why?

The Feedback

I’ve never in my life had more feedback about my physical appearance than I have with this beard experiment. It turns out, beards are polarizing!

Some people love it.

”You’re one of the rare people who really suit having a beard.”

Other people (read: my mother) hate it. At a party this summer, my mother is caught secretly trying to rally other attendees to join Team Anti-Beard.

LOTS of people think it makes me look really, really old. From my step-daughter, Charlotte:

“It has aged you ten years. You don’t even have wrinkles! You shouldn’t have this beard while you can still look young.”

OUCH!

Several people think I look like I woke up in a dumpster.

”Have you gambled away all your possessions? What happened?” (actual quote)

Charlotte chimes in with another classic line after seeing this photo of my brother and me playing in a golf tournament together:

“You like your brother’s dad—it looks like a Father/Son golf tournament.”

OUCH again!

Who Am I?

It’s funny, because most of the feedback starts with “You look…” That makes sense. The beard changes the way people see me. It’s like a Halloween costume. Regrettably, I feel like for Halloween, I dressed up as the dad from Family Ties.

The bigger question, though, is not what I look like. It’s about who I actually am. And I’m still struggling with the mixed messages the beard is sending me.

Yes, the beard makes me look much older. Is that such a problem? I’ve always looked young. Maybe it’s time to embrace my actual age . For some reason, it doesn’t even feel particularly bad to hear that I look older. It almost feels like… I’m grown up.

The beard has also served as a Membership Card in the Club for Manly Men. People genuinely look at me and treat me differently because of the beard. I’m getting beard nods from other beardos. More fist bumps. I’ve been invited to more dude-stuff, including something cleverly called He-Man Live Ball, which is an hour of tennis where guys pelt balls at each other as hard as they can. (By the power of Greyskull, I am having loads of fun doing this!)

So despite all the negative feedback about looking like I’m ready to crawl into the grave, there are surprisingly positive aspects to my chin sweater. I really do feel like I’m play-acting a different, unlived version of myself to see what it feels like… and it mostly feels pretty good!

The Final Straw?

I have a surreal experience with a completely objective observer of the beard. She is a friend of my wife, Debbie, visiting from out of town. We’ve never met before, but we quickly find out that we share a common friend and I wonder out loud if have other connections. She shares that it’s unlikely because I’m too old to know people her age.

She is a few years older than me. That means she thinks I am at least six to ten years older than I actually am.

Before the beard—thanks to my clean-shaven, boyish face—people generally thought I was three to five years younger than I actually am.

So the beard had potentially aged me by up to FIFTEEN YEARS. What!?!?!

That evening, I am convinced that I need to get rid of this thing.

The Hairy Hunger Games: Have Your Say!

I still have the beard. I have still not decided what to do with the beard.

Do I keep this new, hairy, elderly version of Steve? Or do I revert back to the clean-shaven “LEGO Business Man” look that my kids have mocked me about for years?

I get to choose which version of Steve lives or dies in this next phase of my life. And it’s not an easy decision.

Against my better judgment, I am opening the first ever poll of the Midlife Field Guide community to get your input. I invite you to vote on the future of my hairy face, and, if you are so inclined, to roast or celebrate the beard as you see fit in the comments.

Cast your vote in the Hairy Hunger Games below!

Even more fascinating, here is what A.I. thought I’d look like versus reality—eerie!

Next edition, I will let you know the fate of my face and the winner of the Hairy Hunger Games!

In the meantime, as it is Movember and I’m writing about facial hair growth, I am also fundraising for men’s health. It would be so awesome and appreciated if you would consider donating to a great cause and help the Midlife Field Guide reach our goal.

You can donate to our Movember team here. Thanks for your support of Movember, even if you don’t support my personal beard 🤪

I’m looking forward to your beard roasts in the comments!

Steve

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Hello Midlifers!

This past week, I gave a talk about midlife and all the experiments I’ve been doing on my life at Peter Reek’s book launch/midlife event, Shift Sessions. This inspiring event featured ten other speakers sharing their midlife stories and experiences, and I learned an enormous amount from each of them.

I had a few big insights I want to share with you all.

1. There is a lot of interest in midlife. The event was totally sold out with over 400 people in attendance.

2. There is no one-size-fits-all set of midlife challenges or solutions to those challenges. Everyone is on their own journey.

3. Despite the uniqueness of each journey, there are very common themes, mostly related to dealing with change. There are physical changes, there are social and family changes, there are career changes, and there is often a questioning of an evolving sense of meaning, purpose, and identity.

I also had a few personal insights. This was the most fun I’ve had speaking in a long time. I shared my own midlife experiences with vulnerability and humour and it felt great. I felt really comfortable up on the stage because I genuinely felt like I was speaking in my own voice… to over 400 people. It was invigorating and I want to do more of this.

My Three Midlife Questions.. and the Reaction

My talk focused on three midlife questions I’ve been using to generate the experiments I’m doing here in the Midlife Field Guide. Since the Shift Sessions event, I’ve had a significant number of people reach out to tell me that these three questions hit them hard and that they left thinking about their own individual answers to the questions.

So, I thought it would be valuable to share them here, too!

1) What am I avoiding?

This is a hard question to answer! And yet, for me—in hindsight—the answers are really obvious.

• I had avoided the uncomfortable truth that I should take a break from alcohol.

• I also knew I had developed an unhealthy relationship with my phone.

• And I know that I have avoided elements of my physical health, like strength training, eliminating some unhealthy food choices from my diet, and other things that I really should address sooner rather than later.

Some things, I have avoided stopping.

Some things, I have avoided starting.

But as soon as I actually did these experiments and committed to doing the things I have been avoiding, it became clear to me that I was a) a moron for avoiding them for so long and b) I wished I had done this earlier in my life.

What are you avoiding in your life? It might be starting or stopping certain habits or behaviours, it might be having difficult but vital conversations, or it might be something else entirely.

What might happen if you identified what you’re avoiding… and then made a plan to stop avoiding it?

2) What dreams am I putting off for “some day?”

I am willing to bet that every one of us has at least one unfulfilled dream that we have not yet fully explored. And we keep telling ourselves, “I’ll get to that when things calm down.” Or when I have more money, time, space, or anything else. And until “some day,” we don’t give ourselves permission to explore this dream.

I haven’t written about this experiment here yet, but as a kid, I always harboured dreams of doing comedy. And due a series of unfortunate experiences, I lost confidence in my ability to be funny. But, as you will soon find out, I recently did a stand-up comedy experiment and I could not possibly be happier that I finally mustered the courage to revisit this lost dream.

Another one: I haven’t even started this experiment yet, but I feel a deep desire to play music with other people and I’ve put this one off for “some day” too. Now I know I have to do it and I’m committed to making it happen.

What are the dreams that you’ve been putting off for “some day” and are there opportunities to start exploring them now?

3) What, on my deathbed, am I going to deeply regret never doing in my one, precious life?

This is different from dreams that are put off for “some day.”
For me, this question digs more into life experiences I’d like to have and it’s less about fulfilling bigger dreams or exploring unlived versions of myself.

For example, I know this sounds ridiculous, but the experiment about growing a beard for the first time at age 53 is one of my answers to this question.

I never thought I could grow a beard, but at some point, I wondered to myself, “Am I really never ever going to find out if I can grow a beard? Am I going to go to my grave never knowing what I look like with a beard?”

And so I grew a beard.

And, as you will find out very soon, having the beard has kinda changed my life in a lot of unexpected ways. (I know this makes no sense, but it genuinely has had a much bigger impact that I ever would have guessed!)

Another teaser for the future… this past weekend, in an attempt to “de-program” some of my Type A/Striver/Achiever/Productivity tendencies, I had my first ever psychedelic experience with a fully legal, medically supervised ketamine trip. It sent this square, risk-averse nerd on a journey that was like nothing I’ve ever done before, including total dissociation from my body. I’m still processing it, but having this truly unique experience came from asking this question.

When you really sit and contemplate that there is going to be a finish line to our human journey, it becomes more and more clear that if there are things you want to experience while you’re still here, you should probably start making plans to do some of them.

What are the things that you will regret never doing in your one, precious, finite life? And how can you start planning to do some of those things?

There is a consistent theme to these three questions.

Start doing things now.

I am trying to explore why I haven’t started doing the things that I either want to do, or know I should be doing. There is always something uncomfortable preventing me from starting these things. It might be physical discomfort, emotional discomfort, or a fear of judgment, embarrassment, or failure.

And because I now know that discomfort is why I don’t do these things that are ultimately great for me, I have embraced a new mantra:

Run towards the danger!

Whatever I am most avoiding, do it.

Whatever I am most afraid of, do it.

Whatever I keep putting off, do it.

Midlife is a journey of self-discovery and adventure. I want get more comfortable exploring the unknown and embracing the uncomfortable.

Run towards the danger!

If these questions resonate with you, too, I’d love to know what some of your answers are! If you’re comfortable doing so, please consider this an open invitation to share your thoughts in the comments.

Movember

As someone who has never grown a beard in my whole life, I have never participated in Movember. This year, it feels very appropriate to finally embrace my hairy adventure and support men’s health at the same time.

I have been waiting for November to finish writing about the saga of my beard precisely because of Movember, so watch this space to find out why the beard experiment has been more impactful that I ever thought.

I’m also going to get a prostate exam in support of raising awareness of men’s health. Do not panic—I will not be live-streaming it or anything like that. But I’m committing to getting it done this month.

Philanthropy is another element I want to explore in the Midlife Field Guide and this is a first step in doing so. If you’re so inclined, I invite you to support our modest fundraising goals for Movember here—thank you!

Shift: 7 Mindsets for an Inspired Midlife

If you’re interested to know more about Peter Reek’s wonderful book about midlife exploration, you can get it here on Amazon and here on Indigo.

Also watch this space for future Shift Session events that might be coming to a city near you.

Don’t Let The Old Man In

Pod O’Sullivan has recently launched “Don’t Let The Old Man In,” the first podcast in a new midlife podcasting network. It’s part of a larger midlife education and experiences project called The Wisdom Vault, rooted in 8 pillars of positive aging.

I love this whole endeavour and have really enjoyed the podcast episodes so far, especially the kickoff with Michael Bungay Stanier about life reinvention.

Phone Fight Live Kick-off TOMORROW!

As you might know, I did ’s 5-Week Phone Fight course this summer and it was transformative. I was in the beta-testing group and wrote about my experiences here.

Tomorrow (or today, yesterday, or recently, depending on when you’re reading this)—Tuesday November 11th—Emmy is publicly launching the Phone Fight course. She’s doing an Instagram Live with at noon ET, a Substack with me at 3 pm ET, and an AMA at 7 pm ET.

If one of the things you’ve been avoiding is managing your attention and your phone usage, you might consider checking this terrific program out.

Thanks for reading and I hope the three questions provoke some deep thinking and generate some insights for you. Again, please feel free to share any answers or thoughts about the questions in the comments.

I know this is off-topic, but I wanted to wrap by just sharing with you all that I am having so much fun doing this Midlife Field Guide. There are a whole bunch of experiments, some of which were alluded to above, that are in progress and I cannot wait to share them all with you.

Answering these three questions and doing the experiments continues to meaningfully change my life and your support and encouragement continues to be exceptionally motivating.

Thank you!

Steve

P.S. Also…

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?

This is the last instalment of my running experiment, which started with a one block trot, evolved to regular summer training, and has built to the grand finale…

My first ever competitive running race, The Eastside 10k. It will involve multiple humiliations, all in the last half of the race.

The run starts in downtown Vancouver, snakes through the downtown eastside of the city, goes up a fairly decent hill, and then turns around and comes back to the original starting line.

Everyone who has done the race before talks about “The Hill.” The Hill hits just over the halfway mark of the race. I’ve been told it’s daunting and longer than you think. It is apparently common for people to think they have finished The Hill, and to then turn a corner only to realize that there is another leg of The Hill. And then when they think they have finished The Hill again, there is another turn… and another leg of The Hill. The way everyone talks about it, it feels like I might need to set up a base camp and do altitude training.

The Race Week Plan

I’ve got a plan. I’m going to run 10 km on Monday, 5 km on Wednesday, 3 km on Friday, and then do the race on Sunday.

As the week begins, the plan falls apart. Real life intervenes. I miss doing the 10 km on Monday. I miss doing the 5 km on Wednesday. I am panicked.

I get up early on Friday and decide to do 6 km, up the same route with a big hill where I injured my soleas muscle. It’s prep for “The Hill.” The run goes fine. My time is pretty solid, even on the hilly part. As I look at the Strava data after I finish, I’m feeling good about Sunday!

Soon after the run, the outer edge of my right foot starts hurting. From my pinky toe down to the base of my heel. Why is this happening two days before the actual race??? I don’t remember tweaking anything at all during the run. Gah!

My First Race Kit

Friday is also the day I check in to get my race kit. This is the first time I’ve ever done this. There is a big station inside a local sporting goods store where I get my race bib, a bunch of safety pins, and a shirt. The bib has a tracker in it that will record my race time as I pass through all the different stages of the race.

There is also a map of the course, including an elevation map. Can you guess which part of the course is The Hill???

Saturday morning. The foot is still quite sore to stand on. I roll it out with a small ball. I knead it with my hands. I put on enough Voltaren to anesthetize a small animal. As the day goes on, it starts feeling a bit better.

One of Debbie’s friends, Roxanne, who I ran my first 5 km with, sadly drops out of the race due to injury. We have an extra racing bib, so we reach out to my friend, Todd, to see if he wants to do the race last minute. He does! He tells me when he got my text, he had just cracked a beer and then immediately poured it down the sink. He will be racing under the name Roxanne, which is amazing.

I go to bed nervous about the race, my foot, and the Hill.

My wife, Debbie, runner extraordinaire, is not nervous at all. This is just like another day at the office for her.

Race Day!

I tentatively step out of bed in the morning. My foot feels… fine? It’s a Midlife Field Guide Miracle! I spend a LONG time stretching out my legs. Then we pick up Todd (a.k.a. Roxanne) and head down to the starting area. There are thousands of people here. It’s daunting for a newbie like me.

There are try-hards running to the running race. What a flex to actually run to a running race! (I secretly hate them for doing this—it feels like they will post their pre-race run on Strava as a power move...)

Like human cattle, we head down to a giant corral where all the runners gather behind the start line. There are sections of the corral based on how fast you think you’ll run the race. So the people who run slower start a bit later than the people who will sprint the entire race. We settle in just ahead of the section for people who will complete the race in one hour.

That’s my goal: finish in under an hour. That’s it. It means I need to keep up a pace of under six minutes per kilometre and I feel cautiously optimistic that I can do this.

Quickly, the first wave of runners is off. Then the countdown begins for our group. 3, 2, 1, GO! I turn on my custom made running music playlist, and start running, blindly following the giant crowd around the streets of downtown Vancouver.

Todd/Roxanne quickly runs off ahead of me and Debbie is a tiny bit behind me. I thought I would be paying more attention to where everyone is and looking around a lot more during the race, but I was in my own world the whole time. No talking. No sightseeing.

Even with music playing in my ears, I am struck by the thunderous sound of running in a very large group. It’s like being in the middle of a pack of galloping horses. Or a North Korean military parade, with thousands of feet hitting the concrete in a repetitive cadence.

Soon, I pass 1 km. I’m under 6 minutes at 5:53. Then 2 km. I’m under 6 minutes at 5:53. 3 km at 5:42. 4 km at 5:45. What is going on?

Even though, for me, I feel like I’m running pretty fast, I am consciously trying to hold back and pace myself. I’ve heard that in races, many novices go out too fast, too early and have nothing in the tank for the last chunk of the race. Plus, I still have The Hill ahead of me. “Stayin’ Alive” kicks in on my playlist and the drum beat and baseline keep me cooking along.

I’ve never run in a crowd before, so it’s weird to settle into a pack of people running the same pace you are and just move together like a collective blob. Despite the collective blob, I am getting passed by a fairly significant number of people. This doesn’t feel great, but I keep trying to force myself to just stay on pace and not compare myself to anyone else running.

5 km. Still under six minutes at 5:48. I am feeling good that I can do this in under an hour!

“Running Down a Dream” is the soundtrack now, and the mix of the title and guitar riff propels me forward.

Then… The Hill is upon me. There are signs on the route warning you about The Hill. There is a start line with time tracking… just for The Hill. This entire segment of the race is branded as “Kill The Hill.”

A lot of people around me start walking after we turn the first corner of The Hill. I keep going and suddenly, I am the one passing a bunch of people around me. I’m definitely not going very fast, but I’m still running. Another turn and more hill. And then the finish line for The Hill is right in front of me.

As I cross the peak of The Hill, elation! I feel like planting a flag and doing an Everest-like photo shoot. This is a major accomplishment… at least, for me.

6 km and it’s my first one over 6 minutes at 6:08, but… it was up The Hill.

I’m a bit gassed, but I have a decent downhill stretch. At the 7 km mark I’m back below 6 minutes at 5:50. However, I can feel myself starting to slow down with 3 km left.

Humiliation #1: My Water Station Disaster

I made a bad rookie mistake at this point. There was a water station coming up and I was really hot. I had ignored all the other water stations, but I thought this was the time to do it. I imagined myself being that really cool runner who just grabs the cup from the outstretched hand of a race volunteer, slugs the water, crushes the paper cup, and dunks into a garbage can without losing a step.

Instead, I grab the water, attempt to slug it down, but pour the water down my wind pipe and start choking. I have to stop running by the side of the road. For a good while, I have a coughing fit trying get the water out of my airway.

So yeah, proud moment: I essentially water-boarded myself in the middle of the race.

Once I recovered, things continued to be get harder. The next segment involved running up an extended overpass. At this point of the race, I’m so tired that this tiny bit of uphill is harder for me than The Hill. I hit the 8 km mark, trudging uphill. With the water-boarding incident, I’m over six minutes again at 6:12. No!

The song on my playlist is absolutely perfect at this point. Sam Roberts’ Hard Road.

“There's no road
That ain't a hard road
To travel on.”

Damn right, Sam Roberts!

Humiliation #2: Strollers and Corn

Welcome to the low point of the race for me. I’m already tired. I’ve already water-boarded myself. I’m still running uphill. And then two incredibly embarrassing things happened back-to-back.

First, I was passed by a mother pushing a stroller with a baby inside. She and the dad were wearing special bibs that said “Stroller” so I guess this is a thing. Lemme tell ya, getting passed by a stroller is humbling. I feel like as she passed by, the baby stared at me with pity while enjoying some tasty apple juice in her sippy cup.

Then it got even worse.

I got passed by two grown men… dressed up as cobs of corn.

Seriously. Here’s the proof:

Do you have any idea what it feels like to see people dressed up as corn cobs ahead of you??? HINT: Not good.

I felt like getting passed by Corn Cosplayers was a wrong that needed to be righted and I was determined to speed up and pass them. And yet, I could not. They popped off like they were being chased by Orville Redenbacher.

I got creamed by corn.

9 km. I’m slowing down. 6:05. Over six minutes again! The dream is dying!

The Big Finish

I’m one lousy kilometre away from finishing. We are back in Gastown, the cool touristy area where the race starts, winding through the streets searching for the finish line. I get a surge of energy, likely powered by self-loathing from having my ass buttered and salted by human corn cobs.

I start picking up the pace and pushing myself.

I start visualizing myself sprinting down the final stretch and crossing the finish line.

Suddenly, we turn a corner and I can see the finish line. The song changes and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” kicks in. Perfect! I start sprinting (or more accurately, pick up my pace to where it feels like I’m sprinting, but to anyone watching, I probably looked like I was hobbling to the finish looking for medical attention…)

As I pass the finish line, a wave of relief sweeps over me.

I’m also a bit in shock—I can’t believe I did it. At a time when everything else in my body seems like it is on the decline, this feels like I’ve unlocked a new level of what I’m capable of. This is highly unexpected at age 53!

My very last kilometre with my sprint to the finish at the end ended up being my fastest. The only disappointment is that I had to watch the Human Corn Cobs cross the finish line just in front of me.

I am pouring sweat and overheating as I am handed my finisher’s medal. I will treasure this memento. Debbie has about 30 of these things, all hung on a doorknob in our bedroom, from all the races she has run. She has run so many races that the medals don’t mean a lot to her. I never believed that I would ever have one of my own. I kind of can’t believe I’m holding it and that the race is done.

Todd/Roxanne—who didn’t train for the race and decided to run at 9 pm the night before the race—beat both Debbie and me. Amazing! Debbie and I finished in almost the exact same time, despite never seeing each other during the race.

Todd/Roxanne and Debbie showed me how to find the actual race time tracked by my bib. Under an hour officially! How did I compare with others? Not so great! But I really, truly do not care at all. Just finishing this thing feels like a major life achievement—something I did not think I was capable of doing or that I would ever do.

Here’s the most bizarre part about the post-race stats. They track the Kill The Hill portion of the race, and compared to the full race, I actually did much better—23rd out of 63 in my age range—on The Hill! Why? I have no idea!

My only disappointment is that I wasn’t able to discover how I ranked relative to parents with strollers or people dressed up as cobs of corn.

The Running Experiment Wrap Up Report

What are the takeaways from this experiment?

There are many:

• I did something I didn’t think I could do. I didn’t train obsessively, but I prepared for it and did the work. I was genuinely unsure if I could do this or if it would be absolutely dreadful doing the running itself. I proved something to myself by doing this race.

• I joined Debbie in one of her favourite activities. As a couple now mostly empty-nesting, we’ve been making a concerted effort to do more things together. Debbie is a long-time runner and every time she’s invited me to join her, I’ve staunchly said no way. This was a major reversal on my part and I’m so happy I did it. Now we have something new we can do together!

• I know this is making me healthier and more fit. I’m not sure if it’s the running or the absence of alcohol, or more likely, the combination of both, but my resting heart rate has dropped noticeably over the course of this past summer. Before these lifestyles changes, the lowest it ever got at night was 53, and now I’m regularly seeing it as low as 48 BPM.

  

  
  Whether it’s been starting running, stopping alcohol, or taking a break from the more poisonous and addictive aspects of my phone, these experiments continue to reinforce for me that I already know what I should be doing, but I am getting short-term benefits from avoiding these things. In hindsight, I feel better and I’m happier because I’ve done them.

• Here’s the only rub about running so far. Keep in mind that I’m writing this very soon after finishing the Eastvan 10k race. I don’t know if I love running. I love playing sports where there is a game being played, whether it’s tennis or pickleball or golf or volleyball. So far, running has felt great… as soon as it’s done. And it’s been meditative while I’m doing it. But it hasn’t been fun. And I haven’t been excited to run yet. I’m not sure if that’s just what running is, or if I just haven’t gotten to the fun part yet.

  
  Since the race ended, I’ve done a couple of 5 km runs with Debbie and it’s been really nice. We have talked about whether to do more races, or even step up and do a half marathon. For me, it’s too soon to commit, but I’m trying to stay open-minded.

Overall, I have learned that it is worth is revisiting things that I have not enjoyed in the past. I have a really hard time motivating myself to do unpleasant activities, and this has been a wake-up call that Future Steve will appreciate me continuing to put in some unpleasant present in exchange for a happy, healthy future.

What’s something you’ve written off as ‘not for you’—but might be worth testing again? My unsurprising recommendation? Go for it!

That’s it for running… for now. Coming soon:

• Updates on my beard experiment

• A brand new standup comedy experiment with my daughter

• A barrage of high tech medical testing

Thanks for reading—see ya next edition!

Steve

In case you missed the first two pieces in this experiment:

Part 1 of Running - Running PTSD

Part 2 of Running - Suffering is Optional

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?

After overcoming my teenaged asthma-induced fear of running, I signed upfor a 10 km race, and strated training with a trot around a single block in part one of this experiment.

Since then, I spent this past summer attempting to ramp up my fitness and running prowess in an attempt to find a shared activity with my wife, Debbie.

My First Ever 5 km

After circling the block for a while, I was invited to run 5 km with my wife, Debbie, and her friend, Roxanne, both of whom run half-marathons. This felt like a giant leap from running around the block. I reluctantly agreed.

We headed down to Vancouver’s False Creek seawall near Olympic Village. Debbie and Roxanne knew how nervous I was and restrained themselves with a turtle-like pace. When we hit the turnaround point at Granville Island, I was already tired. Only halfway! Gah!

As I trudged back the way we had come, I quickly realized that I had missed a way to frame this optimistically: I was continually getting closer to the end of the run. I’m not sure whether it was exhaustion, “runner’s high,” or delerium, but at some point on the return leg, I mentally and physically eased up. I lost track of the time. I stopped attention to the effort being expended. And suddenly, it was over.

I had run 5 km.

The pace was far from blistering, at just under 34 minutes, but I had done my first 5 km run… ever. And I’d done it with Debbie!

What Do You Listen To When You Run?

I knew that with a 10 km race a few months away, I needed to put in some more regular running time and it wouldn’t all be with Debbie.

This raised an interesting question: what should I listen to when I run? A music playlist? An audiobook or podcast? Nothing?

I decided to start running while listening to famed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s audiobook, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” It felt like a very meta decision to listen to someone writing about running, while I was running… in anticipation of writing about running.

It turned out to be the perfect choice.

This is what I think about when I listen to Haruki talk about what he talks about when he talks about running.

I listened to the story of Haruki’s first race, and the first time he put a pennant on his shirt. As I ran, I imagined myself doing the same thing in a couple of months at the Eastside 10k. #visualizationFTW!

I listened as Haruki told of the transformational impact that giving up smoking had on his life, and thought about my own in-progress experiment of giving up alcohol.

One day, I was doing a 5 km run on a steamy summer day and I was quickly running out of steam. At the same time, I was listening to Haruki talk about running from Athens to Marathon in absolutely blazing heat. If Haruki can do that, I told myself, I can certainly keep going and finish my 5 km. And I did.

Haruki writes a lot about the parallels between running and writing, and the discipline it requires to be successful at both. He says that consistency of effort beats intensity of effort. And whether it’s running or writing, if you want to be successful, you have to commit to a practice, show up every day, and teach your brain and your body that this is the work required of it. Duly noted!

Soon, I began looking forward to my runs, thanks in large part to Haruki.

My runs became a regular source of surprise for those that knew me well as a Professional Running Hater. I ran into my buddy, Todd, while running in our neighbourhood. He was incredulous.

“What has gotten into you? I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Why are you doing this?”

Am I turning into Forrest Gump? Growing a beard and suddenly running all the time?

RUN, STEPHEN, RUN!

Maybe not so much…

Suffering Is Optional

One of the big messages of Haruki’s book is this: suffering is optional. It’s all about your mindset.

One day, I was out for a 5 km run, and yet again, it was pretty hot. I was listening to Haruki talk about running an ultra marathon and having to treat his body like a mechanical robot, mile after mile, for 62 miles. It sounded torturous, but it was also inspiring.

I hit a point where I could turn right and run my usual 5 km… or I could instead turn left and add another 2-3 km to the run, mostly through forest trails. Inspired by Haruki, I turned left.

Before I knew it, I had done my longest run ever: 8.5 km. A far cry from Haruki’s 62 MILES, but it was still a big milestone for me.

The next day, however, my legs were sore and I could barely get down the stairs. #oldman

The Magic of Running Reveals Itself

I have hit a point where I am finally beginning to understand why people like running.

For the first kilometre or two, I notice my breathing and it’s uncomfortable. And then something magical takes over. The focus on breathing fades into the background and I start having some interesting thoughts. My mind wanders in a wonderful way when I’m running. I do a lot of really solid thinking, including loads of ideas for creative projects. I also enjoy leaning into extended, stupid daydreams. It’s like a mini-vacation from real life. I’m out here for a decent amount of time with no screen, connectivity, interruptions, notifications, or messages.

It is surprisingly meditative. The freedom to relax and be present is an unexpected gift of this activity I have hated for so long.

At the end of a run, I always feel better than when I started. It’s the same with Haruki’s book. Soon, I’m nearing the end of the audiobook and getting sad that I will have to find something else to listen to while running.

In the last section of the book, Haruki confronts his aging body. He is no longer able to achieve the times or results that he wants in marathons and triathlons. He realizes in the end that inefficient efforts are still worthy. There are always going to be other people who are faster than you. As you age, you will not be able to compete with your younger self.

And yet, it is still worth running.

At 53, preparing to run my first ever race, I need to hear this.

I’m very sad to finish Haruki’s audiobook. It was a perfect companion for my initiation into running and now it’s done. Now what am I going to listen to???

Music for Running

I build myself a midlife running playlist on Spotify and it is filled with some truly cringe-inducing songs, arranged extremely randomly. I will admit to being particularly pleased with myself when I can find a perfect combination of beats and mid-life running themes.

Songs like Hard Road by Sam Roberts, Runnin’ Down A Dream by Tom Petty, Hurts So Good by John Mellencamp, and Everyday is a Winding Road by Sheryl Crow spur me onwards.

I have decided to start all my runs with Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum for a couple of reasons - it’s one of my favourite guitar licks of all-time and it’s also a great reminder that I’m not going to be here forever and to appreciate the time I’ve got.

I’m not sure I like running to music as much as an audiobook. The songs are too familiar and my mind kept wandering back to actual running and breathing. I did get some nice daydreaming and idea generation done, but it was nowhere near as much total absorption as Haruki’s audiobook.

I also noticed that I seem to adjust my pace to the beats in the songs. I slowed down with slower songs and picked up my pace with faster songs. I should look up what an ideal cadence is for running a 10 km race in 55 minutes and pick a bunch of songs with that number of beats per minute.

The Strava Effect

I’ve written about Strava before. It’s like Facebook for Exercise. Or more like LinkedIn for exercise, because it involves a lot of humble bragging. I guess there is a value to having a little community of people supporting you in your running or biking or swimming, but it also seems to add a layer of social pressure and gamification to exercise.

Does Strava change my running? Yes, it does. Instead of stopping my run when I get back to my house with a total distance of 4.85 km, I will do little extra loops or stretches until I hit 5 km. I feel great when I see that I have set personal best times in some distance or segment of the run, and I will feel disappointed in myself when I fail to do this.

I recently did a 5 km with Debbie, and ran into a friend who wanted to chat for a few minutes. It was nice to see the friend, (and honestly, nice to stop running briefly) but all I could think about was that this unexpected encounter was ruining my Strava segment times. I actually considered not posting my run because the times would look weird. Damn you, Strava and your gamified mind-games! (And yes, I am pathetic.)

I generally feel worse about myself when I’m on Strava, because so many people on there do extreme distances. My “insanely long” run of 8.5 km is a warm-up trot for many people who often run 20 km or bike 100 km on a regular basis.

An Impulsive Run

In mid-August, I headed out for a run. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to run when I got out there, but I just kept running and suddenly I was 5 km away from my car. WHAT?!?!

I quickly turned around and headed back, knowing that I was going to have to do 10 km to get home. The turnaround point was a little hard mentally. I was already tired. It was hot. And I was only halfway done. The last few kilometres were slow and pretty hard. But I made it back to my car.

I was SO overheated by the end that I poured sweat for a full 30 minutes after finishing.

But… I ran a full 10 km! My longest run ever.

I feel a massive sense of accomplishment for hitting this milestone. I feel anxiety going down because I now know I can actually run 10 km without dying. Slowly but surely, I’m making progress, both physical and mental. I think I will be able to run the Eastside 10k race.

A Real Pain in the Arch

It’s a few weeks before the big 10 km race and randomly, I have noticeable soreness in my left side.

Outer left foot pain. Left heel pain. Left hamstring pain. Left IT band pain.

I have a hunch where this is coming from. I have an arthritic big left toe, a.k.a. Hallux Rigidus. I think I’ve been avoiding pushing off my big toe, which has left me running on the outside of my left foot.

This is the sh*t part of midlife. I’m no longer invincible. Chronic injuries like my toe lead to other weird injuries. And at this age, every single injury takes forever to heal.

I reached out to my friend who is a podiatrist and got a cancellation appointment for the next day.

Foot Fault

I had a foot exam. I had x-rays. I had my feet taped up to provide better support and was fitted for new orthotics. (My current orthotics are apparently awful.)

I found out that both my big toes have some arthritis and may eventually require surgery. I also have a bone spur and a bone fragment in my toe joints. FUN! None of this bodes well for my looming race.

A Real Pain in the Calf

A few days later… injury! On the other side!

I tweaked something in my right calf going up a hill on a fairly easy 6 km run. I thought it was a cramp and decided to keep running. It came and went, but didn’t go away.

An hour post-run, it was still there, despite stretching, rolling, and hammering it with a Theragun. I took Aleve and coated it in absolute gobs of Voltaren.

I went to see Lishan Sharples, who has competed in the Kona World Ironman Championship and first gave me the advice to run around a block a single time. He told me that I have strained my Soleus muscle. I did not know that the Soleus muscle even existed prior to this. It apparently sits underneath the calf. I injured this hidden muscle by running up too steep a hill. Damn you QE Park hill!

After digging into it and stretching it out for a bit, he thought it wasn’t too bad and encouraged me to try ten or fifteen of running tomorrow. He told me that as far as running injuries go, this is the best one possible and shouldn’t impede my training too much.

I’m nervous. Taped feet, sore hamstrings, glutes, and IT bands, and now a pulled Soleus muscle in my right leg... I’m a mess!

The One Month Countdown

It’s one month until the 10 km race.

I headed out for a trot with my taped up feet and injured Soleus. I eventually did close to 4 km in a little over 20 minutes of running and no ill effects. I feel like I have dodged a massive bullet with this injury scare. Already, I feel like I’m back on track for the big race!

Also… I felt pretty badass running through injury. I feel like Old David Goggins.

The Two Week Countdown

Two weeks to race day.

I got a tip from a friend that wearing compression socks to bed at night helps with sore feet. Prior to this conversation, I did not know that compression socks existed. That same day, I rushed out and bought compression socks. I am pretty sure that this is a dangerous midlife precedent.

Debbie did not look impressed (or remotely turned on) as I climbed into bed with these compression socks strangling my feet.

Next week on the Midlife Field Guide… race day:

Can I survive my first ever race and complete 10 km of running? Can I avoid total humiliation? And can I have fun doing it all with Debbie?

Thanks for reading - see you next edition!

Steve

Check out Part 1 of this Running experiment: Running PTSD

And here is the final instalment of the Running experiment: I Got Creamed By Corn and Waterboarded Myself.

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Running PTSD

I hate running. SO much.

I loathe it.

I’d rather sit on a wasp nest that go for a run.

How can you actively despise a normal, healthy physical activity?

Well, I think I have Running PTSD from when I was a kid. I had bad asthma when I was young. I had an assortment of puffers and was even hospitalized a few times. There were a few common triggers for my asthma: getting sick, transitioning quickly from a hot environment to a cold environment (like entering a hockey arena in August), and… running.

Do you want to know how frail I was? I got a chest cold that included bad asthma. I coughed so much and so hard that I gave myself a hernia that needed surgery. #ProudMoment

Every fall when I would head back to school, I dreaded the annual Terry Fox Run. What kind of self-centered monster complains about breathing troubles for a short run when Terry Fox ran across Canada on one leg, with cancer? (That explains why he became a national hero for his courage, strength and perseverance… and I’m whining about running on Substack.) Regardless, I would always get an asthma attack in the Terry Fox Run and it made me hate running. (I’m sorry!)

In high school, there was a separate rite of autumn that was just a long distance run—I think it was called the Field Race. I don’t even remember how long it was, but I could pretty much never finish because I would inevitably have an asthma attack and run out of breath in the middle of the course. It felt really good to be seen walking out of the woods, stumbling and wheezing towards the finish line by everyone else in the school.

There also used to be something every year called the Canada Fitness Awards, which involved physically testing all Canadian children from 1970 to 1992 with a variety of challenges, from climbing a giant rope to the flexed arm hang (anyone remember your trembling arms as the gym teacher counted down the time?), and from curl ups to the shuttle run. There was also… the Endurance Run. Two of my least favourite words, back-to-back. Every spring, the Endurance Run reliably initiated an asthma attack.

So yeah, I learned to hate running at an early age.

Professional Running Hater

As I got older, I thankfully outgrew most of my asthma, but I never outgrew my deep revulsion at running. In fact, I adopted “hating running” as part of my identity.

For decades, I have made fun of running, calling it the most boring sport on the planet. Why would anyone voluntarily torture themselves doing something so unpleasant for hours on a regular basis? Why would anyone look forward to pushing their bodies to the point of total exhaustion and depletion? How do you stay engaged without a ball to chase or shoot?

Here’s the problem… my lovely wife Debbie loves to run.

She runs multiple 10 km races every year and usually throws in a half-marathon for good measure. She pops out of the house and crushes a 5km or 10km run multiple times a week. She runs very regularly to maintain her physical and mental health, and her discipline and commitment have always been inspiring to me.

When we first met, Debbie invited me to join her for runs. I think I might have done one run, which was mostly a courtship attempt. I hated it. Courtship-wise, it was not effective either, likely due to a mixture of my performance and my dour attitude. So I gave up.

Since then, Debbie has learned the hard way that it’s pointless to ask me to run with her.

Why is the Running Hater Running?

Knowing all this, why am I doing a running experiment?

Debbie and I are now in the empty-nest phase of midlife. And I am very conscious that we now have a lot more free time together as a couple. I don’t want to become one of those couples that lead entirely separate lives with separate hobbies, sports, and friends. (Running vs golf! Euchre vs poker! The Pattersons vs the Hammermans!)

I want to see if I can find a way to enjoy Debbie’s favourite sport so that we can do it together.

I’m also curious to see if I can learn to enjoy something that I think I hate. I did a similar experiment with seafood and it went surprisingly well.

And, of course, it’s probably good and healthy for me to do this, too.

Harumph.

The Hypotheses

• If Debbie and I do more activities together, we will have a stronger empty-nest marriage.

  • Debbie and I will subjectively monitor our relationship to see if it changes as a result of taking up a new shared activity, running.

• If I commit to doing a healthy activity that many, many other people love, I will be able to overcome my past stigma and learn to enjoy it.

  • The starting point is hating running. If I introduce running into my life, I will monitor my attitude to see if it changes.

• If I can find a way to force myself to do activities that are hard or unpleasant in the short-term, there will be long-term benefits that outweigh the initial discomfort and difficulty.

  • With the introduction of running, I will use my Oura ring to compare my physical health markers like resting heart rate, HRV, sleep, and stress levels to pre-running data.

• Bonus pre-experiment prediction: I’m 100% going to injure myself doing this.

The Experiment

Steve will train for, and run in, a 10km race with his wife, Debbie (aka The Runner).

Field Notes

Early April, 2025.

I begin my running journey by talking with Lishan Sharples, an amazing personal trainer, massage therapist… and Ironman competitor. Lishan is an insanely talented athlete who has raced in the Kona World Ironman Championship. When I hear about how fast he runs, bikes, and swims, and for how long he does it consecutively, I feel like he and I are a different species of human.

Lishan is the best person I can possibly think of to talk about how to start running from zero. His advice was shockingly simple. Run around one city block at a very slow pace where you can talk and breathe comfortably the entire time. In cardio terms, stay in Zone 1 the entire time. He suggested we just head outside and trot around a city block while we talked about running. So we did it. Not so hard!

Next, he told me to do it a few more times in the week ahead. Then go around the block twice a few times. Then three times around the block. And stay at a comfortable pace the whole time, refraining from trying to be fast.

I went home and told Debbie about the plan. A few days later, she deigned to join me for my first training run. One block. It was our first run together in years. I was humbled and touched that Debbie was supportive enough of this experiment to participate in a one-block trot. I’m a lucky fella!

Also… is this the most embarrassing Strava post in history? 0.54 km. A pace of seven minutes per kilometer. And a total running time of 3 minutes and 49 seconds.

After this ambitious effort, I took Lishan’s advice and continued to slowly increase the number of times I circled the block.

Shortly afterwards, Debbie surprised me with an announcement. She signed us both up for the Eastside 10k run, a race through the streets of Vancouver that would be taking place in a few months time. This is a lot more than a casual mosey around the block.

It will be the first official running race of my entire life. Gulp.

This experiment is suddenly getting very real and I’m actually a bit terrified. I genuinely don’t know if I can actually complete this.

I told Lishan the news and asked for his advice.

“I guess you'd better start running!”

Can I exorcize the asthmatic running demons from my past?

Will Debbie and I find a new activity to do together as a couple?

Can I get from 0.54 km to a 10 km race?

Will I end up like this?

Find out in the next instalment of the Professional Running Hater Experiment!

Let me know if you’re a runner with any sage advice for this Professional Running Hater, or if you’re a new runner who has any tips to share.

Real Life Midlife Events

I’ve only recently gotten to know Peter Reek, but I’m so impressed with everything he is doing in the midlife space. His new book is a wonderful exploration of seven different mindset shifts that will lead to a happier and inspired midlife. If you’re in Vancouver, Peter is hosting a live event on November 5th called the Shift Sessions, with a terrific array of speakers sharing stories of their midlife shifts. I’m honoured to be part of it, and I’ll be talking about the shift to a Brave mindset. It’s going to be a memorable night! Tickets are available here.

If you prefer humiliation to inspiration, why not come by and see a Midlife Field Guide experiment in progress? I’m in the middle of doing a standup comedy experiment, taking a class with the brilliant Katie-Ellen Humphries. The class ends next Wednesday, October 15th with a live showcase. Come see me bomb gloriously!

Thanks for reading and for all the encouragement and support of our midlife experiments!

Steve

Check out Parts 2 and 3 of the Running Experiment here:

Part 2 - Suffering is Optional

Part 3 - I got Creamed By Corn and Waterboarded Myself

Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?

Subscribe for free and get weekly life experiments that help to answer midlife’s biggest questions and challenges.

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The Experiment:

Geoff continues to test whether leaping out of his comfort zone at midlife (and onto a stage) can make him feel more alive and bring people together with joy.

Field Notes:

A couple of months ago, I wrote about me and my wife’s totally ridiculous plan to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (if you missed it, you can catch up here). The plan grew out of a joke we’ve been telling each other for the past 15 years:

“Wouldn’t it be hilarious,” one of us said, “if for our 25th, we staged a full-blown production of Fiddler on the Roof and forced all our friends and family to sit through it?”

The joke worked because it was so patently absurd. Neither of us is a trained singer or actor. Neither of us has experience with producing a play. Without experience in theatre, it seemed absurd to attempt such a feat.

Except… we are.

The response has been overwhelming. Friends reached out from near and far. Volunteers came out of the woodwork. A journalist even called, wanting to write a piece. Suddenly, this thing that started as just a whimsical idea became very, very real.

Where We’re At:

In four weeks, we’ve invited some of the most talented theatre people we know to gather. Some are friends we’ve known for decades, others have entered into our life more recently and who we love just as dearly. It is a group made up of composers, directors, writers, choreographers and musicians, award-winners across the board. With all of these talented people gathering, we need something for them to react to. Certainly something more formed than just a vague idea of wanting to put on a show.

Plus we love having a deadline to work towards.

So to start, last Sunday afternoon, my wife Suze and I began to sketch out a framework for our vision. We gathered a whiteboard, a marker, a ton of sticky notes, our laptop and headed out to our backyard.

Our teenage child happened to be home while we were setting up. I wasn’t sure what he thought about any of this. He’s a pretty creative kid, so I figured that he would either think this whole thing was interesting and novel, or embarrassing and to be avoided at all costs. I was delighted to find out that it was the former, and not only did he agree to join us in our brainstorming, but he also expressed an interest in playing one of the roles. I tried to play it cool when I heard the news, but inside my heart was bursting.

But how to begin the brainstorming? We all took a moment and stared at the blank board in front of us. I quickly started writing out the names of our favourite Fiddler on the Roof songs onto sticky notes, which we then affixed to the board. These were the songs that we loved and thought would be fun to perform on stage. Once we were done, we sat back to take in our picks.

“What do we do now?” my wife asked.

I didn’t know how to answer her. Having never structured a play before, that was where I ran out of plans. We agreed that it wouldn’t be a full production of Fiddler, but something that borrows its songs, its spirit, and then becomes our own. And so we continued our journey of exploration.

Suze grabbed my laptop and we began discussing the experience we wanted audience to share in. From the moment people enter the space, we want their journey to begin. We dreamt of transforming the entire venue into the village of Anatevka, the town where the Fiddler story takes place, with signage and scene setting props throughout.

We imagined the show beginning with a narrator who will welcome the audience and set the stage for what is about to unfold. Then, me and Suze will come out onto the stage, one at a time, and the first song, Tradition, will begin.

We were furiously writing this all down into a Google doc, and over the course of the next few hours, the skeleton of a show began to take shape. The three of us all pitched ideas back and forth. Some would land and others would drift away. Sometimes we found ourselves talking fast with excitement, knowing that something good had just emerged. There were no egos at play here. The process was just as fun as the experience we were trying to create.

We began weaving narration that would go between the songs to tell a tale that is both respectful to the Fiddler story as well as being relevant to our lives. We’re taking liberties to introduce some modern themes. We began to imagine our friends and family members in various roles. We created room for an epic chorus. We found ways to play with the text, to make it goofy and fun. Then we added little twists to make the whole night unforgettable.

As we wrote, our excitement kept building. What began as us putting on a play had transformed into a venue for us all to come together to celebrate. To celebrate love, to celebrate joy, and to celebrate community.

Why We’re Doing This

This whole venture stretches me in ways that are both terrifying and exhilarating. I’ve never been taught how to sing. I’ve never danced on a stage. But somehow that fear is part of the fuel that’s pushing me forward. It scratches the itch to do something ridiculous just for the joy of it. It gives me and Suze a project to pour ourselves into now that we’re not having to parent as intensively as we did when our kids were young. It makes us laugh together in a way that feels like medicine.

And even in these early stages, it’s already started bringing people together, from the theatre pros who are showing up at our house in a few weeks to help us brainstorm, to all the people we’ve heard from over the past couple of months who want to be a part of the day. It’s this fuel of collaboration that’s helping this whole idea come into focus. We’ve started on a process that is quickly becoming bigger then the two of us. I can already feel in my body what that night might be like, buzzing with laughter, music, and joy.

At midlife, my intention is to turn towards as much joy as I can. To be part of experiences that fill me up rather than deplete me. To find more reasons to sing and dance and laugh together.

There are parts of this experiment that are incredibly vulnerable. Fiddler on the Roof is a musical and I have never sung in front of people on a stage before. The idea terrifies me, but I’m holding onto the possibility that stretching myself to sing on a stage might open me up in ways I cannot yet imagine. Shortly, Suze and I will begin working with a singing coach. Stay tuned to hear how that goes…

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Welcome to the Midlife Field Guide.
One year.
Two Gen X friends.
Countless personal life experiments.
Can they figure out the meaning of midlife?

Hey Midlifers!

It’s the end of September and I have big news! After deciding to re-examine my relationship with alcohol in February (Part 1), and going through a lot of peer pressure to drink since then (Part 2), I’ve not only done SIX MONTHS with no booze… I’ve done EIGHT MONTHS.

The experiment ended at the start of August. And for whatever reason, I have still not had a drink of alcohol yet. Instead of an A.A. chip, I have decided to celebrate this milestone by giving myself a non-alcoholic, non-anonymous Midlife Field Guide badge.

I was visited by a final test of will right at the end of the six month mark of the experiment. I was in Calgary watching my son playing in an international volleyball tournament. If you’re in Calgary, I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory to eat at least one massive Alberta steak dinner or the locals will call in the Beef Police to set you straight.

So my wife Debbie and I went out to a great place called Bridgette and the server raved about their wine list. Raved about it. She had told us that she has zero tolerance for zero-proof booze, but only because of wine. She informed us that there aren’t any good non-alcoholic wines because the producers can’t replace or replicate tannins. And then she detailed how their sommelier travels to Europe every year and comes back with unbelievable wines, many of which are exclusive to Bridgette.

It was very tempting to just order a glass of some magical red wine to have with our steak (which was amazing). It was like the devil had sent me one last, sumptuous temptation to break the experiment.

And yet I still had no problem saying no.

The Wrap-Up Report

As I sit writing this, I am stunned that I have not had a single drink in over eight months. I am even more stunned that it was not as hard as I thought it would be.

Here are my conclusions:

• I am missing nothing in my life by excluding alcohol.

• I feel better and have more energy.

• I am sleeping better.

• I am 100% okay with being the designated driver for every evening out, and it’s a perk for everyone else, too.

• Is it still a bit awkward socially when everyone else is drinking? Yes, but I’m confident that I can be just as obnoxious sober as I am with a few drinks in me, and will do my best to fit in.🤪

The biggest takeaway from this experiment is that I wish I had done this a long time ago. My life was not better with alcohol in it, but it is so normalized in our society that I just never gave it a second thought. If the thought of giving up alcohol ever came up, it would be paired with “lame” and “uptight.”

Debbie heard a quote somewhere, something along the lines of “Alcohol is the only drug that society actively encourages you to consume more of.” And when you stop drinking, this truth becomes very clear. It’s a weird anomaly when you step back and look at it objectively.

Everywhere you look, there are encouragements to drink alcohol. Happy Hours tell us that it’s happier when we’re drinking and it’s cheaper than usual. Sidewalk signs, t-shirts, and hats declare:

• “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”

• “A day without beer probably won’t kill me, but why risk it?”

• “Drinking responsibly means don’t spill it.”

• “I doubt vodka is the answer… but it’s worth a shot!”

My friend, Jordan Kawchuk, has written a lot about alcohol use disorder. I loved his post exploring what it would look like if we treated other drugs the way we treat alcohol.

I’ve Become A S.O.D.

After six… er, eight months of abstinence, my relationship with alcohol has radically changed. I see it differently. I don’t need it. I don’t crave it. I don’t want it.

I promise I’m not going to be preaching from the hilltops trying to convert everyone else into giving up alcohol. For me, though, I don’t see a reason to go back to drinking on any sort of regular basis again.

Will I never have another drink in my whole life? I doubt it.

I’m sure there will be occasions where I make a conscious decision to have a drink because it’s a unique opportunity or experience. However, I feel very confident that it will be a rare exception instead of the rule. My friend Jon told he labelled this approach “The S.O.D. - The Special Occassion Drinker.” I feel confident that I’m now a S.O.D.

My Non-Alcoholic Beverage Recommendations

Here are my recommendations for the best non-alcoholic drinks if you want to give this a try yourself. I’m not a reviewer, so you won’t be getting any tasting notes or anything like that. (“This mocktail has a hint of oak and some strong notes of blackberry…”). These are just the ones that I went back to regularly because I enjoyed them more than the other options.

• Beer:

  • Partake

  • Heineken 0.0

• Mocktails:

  • Ole canned mocktails

  • Aelo canned mocktails

  • Clever Cocktails

  • Atypique sangria and rum and cola mocktails

• Spirits

  • NOA spiced rum and gin

• Red wine

  • Edenvale Cabernet Sauvignon

  • Luminara Cabernet Sauvignon

• White wine

  • Oddbird Sparkling White Wine

My Recommendations for A Booze-Free Experiment

If you want to undertake an experiment like this yourself, these were the most important factors for me:

• Commit to at least three months. Give yourself the time to really get used to not drinking for an extended period of time. Three months is long enough for habits and cues to exhaust themselves and for clearer thinking and better sleep to arrive. It’s interesting to me that in A.A-land, “give it 90 days” is a popular refrain, with three months being a very significant milestone of sobriety. So yeah—there’s a lot suggesting that three months is a great place to start.

• Give it up completely. No cheating. No exceptions. Make it a true pact. It’s easier to make it black and white.

• Tell other people you’re doing it. You can come up with a reason. Just saying that I was doing an “experiment” made it more fun and less stressful to share my decision with others. When you tell people, you don’t have to hide that you’re not drinking, which again makes it easier.

• You might want to get rid of the alcohol in your house or move it somewhere really inconvenient. Then stock up your fridge with fake beer and mocktails. A la Atomic Habits, design your environment to make it easy to embrace the new habit and hard to continue with the old one.

• Try to journal, write notes, or just pay attention to how you’re feeling, what situations are more triggering or challenging than others, and what you notice about our society’s general relationship with alcohol.

  ---

I know there are a lot of you in situations similar to mine, where drinking is a regular, unhealthy habit that isn’t negatively impacting your day-to-day life, but isn’t exactly improving it either.

I can conclusively report that my life has been better without alcohol in it.

This has been a great experiment for me personally and, based on both the medical research and my own personal experience, I would highly recommend anyone who is sober-curious to try doing this yourself.

As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope this edition hasn’t been too preachy! 🤣

Steve

Part one: From Beer Olympics to Fake Gin & Tonics

Part two: Never Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Drink