These pauses are important to me because there is a difference between Dan the author, and Dan the friend who actually understands the lonely road of building something that matters. So, for a few weeks, the chapters can wait whilst we reconnect.

In today’s Dispatch:

• An Unremarkable orientation

• The chance to choose your adventure

• And a gift from me to you

Like me, you probably know what it’s like to face the work alone. It’s easy to get lost in the busywork, fixating on what do I do? when we really need to return to who we are.

I decided to start my own business after five redundancies in a decade. I felt like a failure, but I didn’t let myself down. The system did. Though I found ways to replace my income, the frequency was off. I felt lonely.

So I stopped selling and started discovering. I didn’t choose Unremarkable; I found it in the rubble of past callings, practices that ended too soon, and 15 years of notes, articles, and diary entries.

But that’s only part of the story. The rest I discovered through contact with others. In conversations that revealed the questions I’d missed, offered perspectives I’d overlooked, and held me accountable to what the work actually needs.

Contact is what we all need.

Not contact with our computers, phones, or a better system. Contact with people.

My promise to everyone is simple: I will continue to publish every chapter of The Unremarkable Entrepreneur as it’s written. Free for everyone.

No curriculum, no guaranteed answers, no one telling you to work in a way that just doesn’t feel right. This is about finding your own path, and my attempt to walk alongside you, as incomplete and imperfect as that may be.

But right now, I want to speak to those who are already motivated, those who don’t shrink away from the idea of hard work, those who proudly bring a level of intention into their work that is rare.

You don’t have to face the work alone.

And honestly, you’ll never understand what it needs if you do.

Look, getting an email on a regular basis is unlikely to move much for you. So I invite you to make contact with me.

It’s time to choose the next step in your own Unremarkable adventure.

Read the Books

The Unremarkable Entrepreneur exists in five Movements and each can be read in isolation. Because of that, I’m publishing now, for everyone who needs it.

Of course, you can read everything for free, but if you want to engage with intention and enjoy a polished reading experience, you can find the complete digital editions of The Book of Presence and The Book of Empathy here.

If $12 is a stretch right now, let me know. I’d love to give you a copy.

Join the Fellowship

If you’re an active maker, artist, or solo-operator who doesn’t want to build in isolation, I lead a small fellowship of practice and co-learning. I’d love to receive your application for membership. Take a look here.

Enter the Studio

If you are feeling stuck, struggling for traction, or simply overwhelmed by the options, I offer a limited number of one-to-one Studio sessions and partnerships every month. Join the Studio here.

I know these are active moves for people ready to act. You might not be in the headspace right now.

So let me offer you a gift. Something to ground you. A way to reframe your relationship with yourself and the work.

Way back in the beginning of Movement 1: Presence, I wrote a benediction for the chapter ‘The Weight We Carry’. It was a reminder that you are everything you need. There is nothing to add, no external validation you need, and no flaw deep enough to stop you from taking the next step.

To act as a physical reminder of this, I have had that benediction beautifully typeset. It is a one-page, print-ready file designed to be kept at your workbench and returned to when the noise of everything gets too loud.

It is completely free for everyone. Download your copy here and please be encouraged.

Once you set the heavy things down, you’ll start to notice the good things that want to happen to you, through you, and for you.

I wish I could say ‘You’ve got this’. But alone, we just don’t.

How about we hold it together?

Dan

Get the digital edition

Like me, you probably know what it’s like to face the work alone. It’s easy to get lost in the busywork, fixating on what do I do? when we really need to return to who we are.

I decided to start my own business after five redundancies in a decade. I felt like a failure, but I didn’t let myself down. The system did. Though I found ways to replace my income, the frequency was off. I felt lonely.

So I stopped selling and started discovering. I didn’t choose Unremarkable; I found it in the rubble of past callings, practices that ended too soon, and 15 years of notes, articles, and diary entries.

But that’s only part of the story. The rest I discovered through contact with others. In conversations that revealed the questions I’d missed, offered perspectives I’d overlooked, and held me accountable to what the work actually needs.

This Substack is my practice made public.

Every week, I publish a new chapter of The Unremarkable Entrepreneur. There is no curriculum, no guaranteed answers, and I’m not going to tell you to work in a way that just doesn’t feel right. This is about finding your own path, and my attempt to walk alongside you, as incomplete and imperfect as that may be.

The weekly chapters will always be free.

But if you are already motivated, if hard work doesn’t scare you, and you bring a level of intention into your work that is rare, know this: you don’t have to face the work alone.

• Read the Books: The Unremarkable Entrepreneur exists in five Movements, each can be read on its own. Every Movement is available on Substack, but if you prefer a polished reading experience, the complete digital editions are available here.

• Join the Fellowship: If you’re an active maker, artist, or solo-operator who doesn’t want to face the work alone, I lead a small fellowship of practice and co-learning. I’d love to receive your application for membership. Take a look here.

• Enter the Studio: If you are feeling stuck, struggling for traction, or simply overwhelmed by the options, I offer a limited number of one-to-one Studio partnerships every month. Need a one-time intervention or ready to go deeper? Join the Studio here.

Wherever you choose to start, you are welcome here. And if you’re working on something and simply need a sounding board, my calendar is always open.

For now, let me leave you with this: you are everything you need. There is nothing to add, no external validation you need, and no flaw deep enough to stop you from taking the next step.

Once you do, you’ll start to notice the good things that want to happen to you, through you and for you.

Dan Dowman
Unremarkable Founder

A Parting Gift: The Benediction

A beautifully typeset and print-ready version of this Benediction is available to download here. Free for everyone.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your being. A life that refuses to be defined by the quality of your content, social metrics, or the size of your audience.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your feelings. A life that refuses to be defined by performance, KPIs, and the expectations of others.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your ability. A life that refuses to be defined by achievements, qualifications, and scale.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your limitations. A life that refuses to be defined by endless pressure, the need to be everywhere, and the fear of missing out.

May you draw a line in the dirt.

May you choose to stand on the side that notices your opportunities. A life that refuses to be defined by the fear of failure, the shame of years past, and the fear of what comes next.

May you stand where setbacks become invitations.

Where scars declare: I know your pain.

Where practice reveals your next steps.

Where you trade your podium for a workbench.

Where you tend the ground beneath your feet instead of building an empire.

Where you experience sovereignty, find belonging, and come alive with dignity.

Where you allow what wants to happen to you, through you, and for you, to flow.

We often treat our work like a tactical mission that requires a flawless strategy, sitting at our desks and waiting for the right idea to strike. We lobby for our own versions of success, hoping that one of them will finally get us noticed. But when we isolate ourselves behind a screen, we are merely circling a lonely story that no one is waiting to hear.

The truth is that you cannot plan your way into significance. You are often too close to your own life to see the magnitude of what is shifting around you. Just as a tent flooding in France became a foundational piece of family canon rather than a ruined holiday, the friction in your life is the very thing that makes your story worth hearing.

To serve, you must stop trying to project your expertise and start responding to contact with the real world. You are not a solitary author building a legacy in a vacuum. You are a friend with a seat to offer, a midwife ready to receive, and a narrator waiting to be drenched in the messy, imperfect reality of others.

00:00 - The Lessons of a Flooded Tent
01:28 - Why the Entrepreneurial Mind Gets Stuck
02:26 - The Necessity of External Friction
04:07 - Serving Instead of Distracting
08:14 - You Cannot See the View When You Are In the View

What we cover in this episode

• The Illusion of Control: Why your need for a perfect plan is actually a defence mechanism that prevents you from doing meaningful work.

• Contact with the Rain: How unexpected challenges and personal friction serve as the essential catalyst for your creativity.

• The Narrator, The Midwife, and The Friend: Shifting your internal focus from the marketer or entrepreneur to roles that allow you to truly serve others.

• The Wisdom of Perspective: Learning why being too close to your own situation makes you a blind guide in your own life.

Notable Quotes

• “Without someone or something beyond the desk, there is no heading that leads me away from more guesswork.”

• “You can’t see the view when you’re in the view.”

• “The next chapter isn’t written by what you want; it’s written by what you find.

Questions for the Campfire

• What friction in your current work are you trying to smooth over rather than using it as the substance of your story?

• If you stopped trying to pitch or market your expertise for a day, who is the specific person you could listen to instead?

• What is one “washout” moment in your past that you now look back on as a defining, positive part of your history?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Perspective #Entrepreneurship #Empathy #CreativeProcess #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

An invitation

If you’re already in the work, building with intention, and hard work doesn’t scare you - I’d love to have a conversation.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators exists to offer the fellowship, friction, and context many artists, creators, and solo-operators are missing.

It’s not something you can simply join, and membership is currently capped at 20 members (this is not a tactic, it’s about foundations before growth).

If you’re curious to know more, or if this stanza has raised questions for you, please reach out to me on dan@unremarkable.co.

Where We Are:

This is Week 24 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND

6. The Great Leveller

7. Art Like You Mean It

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View ← You are here

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks exploring contact and how to bring our practice to life in the world.

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

This was as close as I could get to the movie and I’d have to wait another few years until it aired on the BBC one Christmas.

That holiday was a literal washout, and when our tent flooded my parents needed to figure out what to do with four kids in the middle of France. For them, it was probably a source of tension, hushed arguments, and frustrated looks.

For me, it was a great adventure.

As a family, we’d go camping most years, but this is the story we keep telling each other. The hilarious imperfection of it all has turned a trip no one wanted to remember into family canon that we could never forget.

Nobody chooses the rain. We haven’t chosen it since.

And we wouldn’t change a thing.

Creator in superposition

When I sit down at my desk in the morning, I am not one person. I am a hundred.

The author who wants to write. The entrepreneur who wants to pitch. The marketer with a post to craft. Each holding a different part of the story, convinced that if I notice them, we’ll finally collapse into the direction we need.

Every version of me exists at the same time, occupying the same moment. Every creative path feels equally promising and full of danger, because to choose one is to risk choosing wrong.

With a hundred different places to start, the last thing I need is the right plan. After all, there isn’t one that will survive contact with the work. I need something to reach me first: a problem to solve, a person to serve, a reader waiting for a reply.

Some rain to respond to.

Without that external contact, the different versions of me will continue to lobby for their version of what we need. Without friction, the answer each holds is just as valid as the next. Without someone or something beyond the desk, there is no heading that leads me away from more guesswork.

The different versions of me that sit at this desk need a mission to serve and a reason to fall in line. Otherwise I’ll just continue my voyage as the lonely practitioner, behind a lonely screen, circling the next version of a lonely story that I hope will get me noticed.

And noticed for what? My wisdom? My expertise? Without someone or something to serve, what I have to say might not be worth hearing. I’m certainly not saying anything that hasn’t been said before.

Our work only matters where it meets someone, where another set of eyes help us understand the bigger picture as we recognise each other in our sodden stories.

The meaning you crave is on the other side of the flood.

The only way forward? Is through.

Meet your maker

Imagine me reading that Batman novel minus the Joker. It would have been a very short and boring book.

It’s the friction that made the story worth reading.

And it’s what makes yours worth hearing.

The redundancy you didn’t expect, the break-up that cast you adrift, or the idea born from someone else’s problem instead of your planning session.

When I sit down to work, the Author, the Entrepreneur and the Marketer try to take charge. They are my protectors, and boy, do I love them. Always ready to bury the unpredictable contact my practice actually needs with something confident to say. They offer the security of immediate direction with ways to feel productive for hours and days on end.

But I don’t want to be distracted, I want to serve. And to serve I need to receive.

To do that, I need to remember who I am. The Narrator, trying to make sense of the story so far. The Midwife ready to receive what wants to happen to me, through me, and for me. The Friend with a table worth sitting at, and a seat to offer.

All of them are cut off without contact.

It’s the people I meet who make the difference. Where a theory becomes a practice. Where an idea finally finds out why it was thought. Where the rubble of your past suddenly has a new reason to exist.

Where you stop perfecting the plan and start dancing in the rain.

The Author, the Entrepreneur, and the Marketer are great partners to me. I cannot serve the work without them. But they cannot meaningfully create without the Narrator, the Midwife, and the Friend. They need the friction that the others carry.

Contact with the work animates them, and drenches the work you serve with meaning. The Friend notices the common ground with someone in pain. The Midwife receives the questions we’re too afraid to ask. The Narrator discovers how the fragments form the mosaic.

The next chapter isn’t written by what you want. It’s written by what you find.

A room full of questions

There’s one person you’ll find at my desk who is instinctively ready to respond: the Dad with Duplo to master.

My son is a painfully wonderful example of what contact can do. When I feel the pressure of a hundred different things, he’s the rain, and I am the response.

Being an uncle to 11 nephews and nieces taught me almost nothing about parenting save for one thing: it’s not going to go to plan.

We did what we could to prepare, but how do you prepare for something you’ve never done before? We read books, we discussed lots of things, we bought all the stuff, but what we really needed was perspective.

So we joined a group of other on-edge parents-to-be, and a doula. A room full of people who held the questions we hadn’t thought of and a guide who’d seen it all. She didn’t give us a guidebook or a template to follow because no solution could withstand what was about to happen to us, through us, and for us. But she could help us step back far enough so we could see the terrain.

There were questions about feeding schedules, how to manage family challenges, medical realities that carried real fear. The doula held every question without flinching, without fixing, and with enough experience to say: plan for what you hope for, and create room for what actually happens.

We didn’t need more information. We needed friends who could hold the awe and terror with us, and the presence of a guide in the uncertainty.

Contact.

It illuminated what we could not see, revealed the questions we had not thought, and broadened the vista of what being a parent might look like.

The story of a young life, with many authors etched into the acknowledgements.

Already in it

A few years ago, my wife and I travelled to the Caribbean island of Martinique. Like camping in France, this trip did not go to plan. Sadly, not enough years have passed yet for it to be funny.

One afternoon we made our way to the coast and I could see a lighthouse up ahead. I was ready to be adventurous. My wife was not.

She said, “You can’t see the view when you’re in the view.”

It’s the laziest and wisest thing she has ever said.

I wanted to climb to the top, to see further, to capture something worthy of the highlights reel. She wanted to stay exactly where we were because we were already standing in something remarkable.

Of course, she was right. The lighthouse wasn’t the view. We were already in it.

And you are too.

Standing on the surface of planet you, too close to feel the magnitude of what is shifting around you.

In isolation, you are a bottleneck for what wants to happen. Confusing the noise of not-yet-visible progress with the silence of nothing happening. Looking at the gap between where you are and where you imagined you would be, reading it as failure.

But you are so much more than the moment you are in.

Right now, your Majesty remains unmoved and the perspective you cannot see does not reduce who you are. The question of who you are here to serve is not redacted by how you feel about yourself.

The question is whether you’ll stay on the shore or wade in. Because only one of those changes you.

From the edge you can say “I understand you” and mean it. But when you wade in, stand where they stand, you discover you can say “I am changed by you” and know it.

The shore is teeming with authors, entrepreneurs, and marketers. Some are barking coaching tips on how to swim, others are throwing floats, the rest are sitting at their laptops creating a brilliant hook for a social post.

But empathy asks: who are you going to respond to? Only then will you put down the plan and sprint into the water like their life depended on it.

It’s what this Movement has been building toward.

You’ve named the isolation you’re carrying and stopped performing your way through it. You’ve forgiven what you couldn’t fix and danced with what remained. You’re holding your mosaic without apology and meeting another person’s complexity without flinching. You’re learning to say “you’re here” instead of “I’m here.”

Not because it’s good for you, even though it is. But because your calling, owned and lived, is good for everyone.

In the future, they probably won’t know your name. But you’ve begun a life’s work of helping others take a step back, look up, and experience the view that was in front of them the whole time.

And like me, huddled over an objectively bad book under stormy French skies, you’ll know that it wasn’t the plan that made the trip worth it.

It was the contact with the rain.

A song to close Movement 2: Empathy

An invitation

If you’re already in the work, building with intention, and hard work doesn’t scare you - I’d love to have a conversation.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators exists to offer the fellowship, friction, and context many artists, creators, and solo-operators are missing.

It’s not something you can simply join, and membership is currently capped at 20 members (this is not a tactic, it’s about foundations before growth).

If you’re curious to know more, or if this stanza has raised questions for you, please reach out to me on dan@unremarkable.co.

Where We Are:

This is Week 24 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND

6. The Great Leveller

7. Art Like You Mean It

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View ← You are here

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

We are constantly sold the lie that business is a problem to be solved with the right template or system. We buy the books, hunt for the shortcuts, and look for the saviour who will finally make our practice work. But when the 3AM exhaustion sets in, those rigid, performative strategies crumble against the reality of our actual lives.

The truth? You do not need more expertise or another playbook. You need to shift your posture from the hungry magnet trying to be seen, to the midwife who simply shows up to receive what is already happening. Expertise often gets in the way of true connection, while the willingness to stand in the flood with someone else turns a transaction into a miracle.

This episode is an invitation to stop articulating your work and start stepping into it. Instead of hunting for customers, you will learn to look for the person in front of you. By letting go of the need for validation and serving what the moment requires, you build a practice that feels like a natural extension of your own life.

00:00 - The Midwife and the Miracle
02:18 - Beyond Performative Presence
04:38 - Why Your Templates Crumble
06:22 - The Shift From Manager to Midwife
09:07 - Serving the Person, Not the Data Point

What we cover in this episode

• The Myth of the Saviour: Why the pursuit of business nirvana through external shortcuts leaves you feeling empty and disconnected.

• The Midwife Posture: How to stop demanding that life follow your plan and instead learn to receive what is actually happening.

• The Problem with Data Points: Why viewing your audience as a conversion statistic prevents you from truly seeing the person in front of you.

• The abundance of one: Moving away from the lonely, performative hustle of social media and towards personal, one-to-one connection.

• The Weekly Practice: A simple, actionable exercise to step into someone else’s room without a hidden agenda.

Notable Quotes

• “I was simply in the moment with him, responding to what was actually happening as best I could. Incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the moment required.”

• “My business doesn’t need a manager. It needs a midwife.”

• “Artists are everywhere, but they’re not standing at an easel waiting for inspiration. They’re seeing and serving the everyday work at hand.”

Questions for the Campfire

Take a moment today and ask yourself these three things:

• When you look at your business, are you trying to manage a result or are you serving the person standing right in front of you?

• Where in your work are you clinging to a template instead of responding to what is actually happening?

• If you removed your call to action, how would you change the way you reach out to the three people you want to serve this week?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#ArtLikeYouMeanIt #TheMidwifePosture #SmallBusiness #Authenticity #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

Practice Note

This week, don’t create anything new. Don’t post, don’t broadcast, don’t announce.

Pick three people. Step into their room. Let them know you see them.

Then do it again next week.

An invitation

If you’re already in the work, building with intention, and hard work doesn’t scare you - I’d love to have a conversation.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators exists to offer the fellowship, friction, and context many artists, creators, and solo-operators are missing.

It’s not something you can simply join, and membership is currently capped at 20 members (this is not a tactic, it’s about foundations before growth).

If you’re curious to know more, or if this stanza has raised questions for you, please reach out to me on dan@unremarkable.co.

Where We Are:

This is Week 23 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND

6. The Great Leveller

7. Art Like You Mean It ← You are here

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

He moves like lightning, no cupboard is safe, and our miniature Dachshund is regularly subject to a brutish sort of kindness. He does not find it adorable.

He’s also a low sleep needs baby and Laura and I have faced many grinding nights.

Yesterday, I tried to settle him during one of those early morning stretches, I could barely see him except for a faint nightlight reading the temperature of the room. He was crying in that in between awake and asleep way, when there’s something bothering him, but what remains a mystery.

At no point did I find myself wondering whether this moment was worth it. I didn’t look for something in return, or demand he respects our routine, or appreciate my effort and the hours I put in. Of course I didn’t. I was simply in the moment with him, responding to what was actually happening as best I could.

Incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the moment required.

It’s not a discipline I’ve cultivated, it’s the most natural thing I’ve ever done, and it’s a feeling you know implicitly. It might be a child, a friend in crisis, someone who arrived at your table already undone, but there are people in your world, and moments in your life, when “what do I get from this?” simply doesn’t come up. You’re too busy attending to what’s actually happening.

Moments where the artist steps into places expertise can’t reach.

You’ve been doing it your whole life.

The only thing that changes is the permission you give them.

The artist and the delivery

We talk about our midwife often.

She arrived at the sharp end of what turned out to be a pretty uneventful birth, by some people’s standards. But it didn’t go to plan either.

There was nothing performative about her presence. She had time for every question, concern, and scream. There was no imposter syndrome. No effort in deploying her skill. Knowing who she was, where she was, and what she’d experienced meant she could focus entirely on what the moment needed. What my wife and son needed.

She had complete trust in her ability to serve the moment at hand.

And so did we.

Not because we had proof, she didn’t present her credentials before crowning. She simply waded into the flood with us, and served what was actually happening.

She didn’t own the birth, she couldn’t dictate how it would play out, she received it. Like me with my son last night, she didn’t need us to be grateful. She didn’t demand that we respect the plan. She didn’t wonder whether it was worth the effort or look to us for validation.

When my son finally arrived, furiously alive, she placed him on my wife’s chest. Then she simply started tidying the space. For us, it was a miracle. For her, it was just another day at the workbench.

I guess in the artist’s studio, it was.

I think about her often. She didn’t walk into that delivery room looking to be seen. She just observed the moment, and served what she saw.

Artists are everywhere, but they’re not standing at an easel waiting for inspiration. They’re seeing and serving the everyday work at hand. On that day, it looked like someone meeting us in the middle of the flood, completely uninterested in playing the saviour. Someone able to attend to what the moment was asking for and serve it faithfully.

Who received what is already trying to happen and gave it room.

Who saw the person, not a data point.

Step into the room

In preparing for the birth, we bought books. Lots of books.

Books that busted parenting myths, books about developmental stages, books about sleeping, feeding, and teaching. For everything our son will ever try, there’s a whole book we could read about how to get it right.

But all that data, all that insight, and every template crumple like waves against my 3AM survival instinct when it’s just me and my crying son.

Honestly, I’m an easy mark for a well-marketed solution. Hit my pain point just right, and I’ll buy your book or jump on a sales call with you.

I cannot tell you how many people since launching my business have tried to sell me a shortcut to business nirvana. Post less, post more, post at these specific times, build an ecosystem, follow this flywheel, steal our exact system.

I have, I confess, been a successful sales target for them more than once.

But without their underlying advantages, their approach was never going to work for me. Their template crumples against my context.

What made me a sales target was how I was framing my practice. It was a problem to solve with a defined outcome to reach.

The natural question that follows: what do I do? What worked for others? What formula can I apply? How do I extract the outcome I want? All of which would have me building someone else’s version of my business.

The question that was needed: what’s actually happening here?

My business doesn’t need a manager, it needs a midwife.

Because art is about where you put it.

You can know more, improve your technique, and repeatedly start over on a fresh canvas and none of it will move your practice one inch. Your work needs context, and context requires contact.

Sit with others around the campfire. Honour the rubble of your experience, trust your own voice, and step into the room. Be ready to receive what’s actually in front of you and let it shape what happens next.

Most practitioners I meet are sat in a lonely room, in front of a lonely screen, writing the next version of the same lonely story hoping that someone somewhere suddenly responds.

I’ve been honest that most people who read my work don’t share it. Fewer still let me know it’s helping. I’m not mad about it. They are the lonely practitioner: trying to birth something, buried under work, notifications, other people’s launches and other people’s certainty.

Asking: what do I do?

I’m not sure I managed to do it yet clearly, but I’ll keep trying to wade into the flood with them to say ‘I see you’. I’ll keep trying to listen to what they have to say, to notice what they’re carrying, and attend to what the moment is asking for so I can serve it faithfully.

My job, and yours too, is to stop trying to articulate the work, and step into it, because you can’t say ‘you’re here’ if you’re still arranging yourself to say ‘I’m here’.

The people we’re reaching for are drowning under the weight of it all.

Their silence isn’t your judgement.

It’s easier than you think

Last month, the Order gathered around a piece of content a member had created. It was a beautifully written piece about burn-out and nervous system regulation. The natural question that every practitioner asks: how do I get people to see this?

The template is simple enough. Post the work, with a CTA at the end, and cross your fingers for some enquiries.

But we know the template doesn’t work; we’ve all lived it. And the platforms won’t spread your message anymore unless you pay for it.

I asked the group: what would it look like to stop trying to be seen and instead become the person doing the seeing?

The conversation shifted from trying to be a magnet to being a midwife.

The group started to imagine ways to share the article with people one-to-one: printed copies sent by mail with a handwritten note, wise snippets shared with a handful of people over WhatsApp, an email version sent one at a time, with personal context.

What matters though isn’t the method, it’s the posture she stepped into, and the meaning it carried.

The CTA was gone. The goal ceased to be sales. Even the recipient changed.

It’s the corporates who’ll pay, but it’s the middle managers who face the strain of a burnt-out boss. And what they’ll receive is honest recognition of their situation without any strings attached or the pressure of another pitch to ignore.

Data won’t be the judge of anything she tries, because a reply rate cannot hold the nuance of busy lives under stress. And there’s every chance the work offers answers to questions they might not be asking yet, even if their body or nervous system is.

Reply or not, the act of stepping into the room became the discipline to model. To show up and say ‘I see you’ without condition or qualifier. To later return, and say ‘I see you’, again.

One day, that person will feel seen. And then anything can happen.

If you build it, they won’t come

I want you to realise something: the people you are trying to reach are not indifferent.

They’re not ignoring your email because your pitch was weak. They’re already overwhelmed. Too many people competing for the same inbox, a calendar that barely breathes, a brain too saturated to make the journey toward you. The potential client who went quiet isn’t uninterested, they just don’t have the capacity to try another new thing.

You have to go to them. To step into the room. To be the midwife ready to receive, not the expert ready to teach or the magnet hungry to convert.

My son is not indifferent to me either, he is simply unable to describe what he is experiencing right now, and no amount of wisdom from my mouth will change that for him.

But one day, my son will look up at me and tell me exactly what he needs. A natural expression of the relationship we’ve formed and the language he’s developed to describe himself.

And on that day, as this one, I’ll be ready to attend to what the moment is asking for and serve it faithfully.

Like your practice, he is an unfolding work of art. There is no finish line to cross, no outcome to achieve, and no condition to be met.

It’s hard. It can feel endless.

And we wouldn’t change a thing.

Practice Note

This week, don’t create anything new. Don’t post, don’t broadcast, don’t announce.

Pick three people. Step into their room. Let them know you see them.

Then do it again next week.

An invitation

If you’re already in the work, building with intention, and hard work doesn’t scare you - I’d love to have a conversation.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators exists to offer the fellowship, friction, and context many artists, creators, and solo-operators are missing.

It’s not something you can simply join, and membership is currently capped at 20 members (this is not a tactic, it’s about foundations before growth).

If you’re curious to know more, or if this stanza has raised questions for you, please reach out to me on dan@unremarkable.co.

Where We Are:

This is Week 23 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND

6. The Great Leveller

7. Art Like You Mean It ← You are here

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

We often treat community as a luxury, a reward we earn only after achieving a certain level of status or success. We build our projects in isolation, convinced that we are meant to be tortured geniuses facing the world alone. But this approach ignores a fundamental truth about sustainable work: you were never meant to carry the weight by yourself.

The success stories we see are rarely the result of pure strategy; they are often the result of pre-existing context, safety nets, and connections that the rest of us lack. When we build in a vacuum, we stop serving the work and start serving our own fears. We trade genuine connection for the safety of playbooks that promise results but offer no real depth.

This episode suggests a different path. It is not about finding a cheerleading squad or a comfort blanket, but about finding a shared table. It is about allowing others to hold the compass with you, providing the friction and the fellowship necessary to see your work clearly.

When you stop building alone, you find the proof that you are not crazy, and you are not alone.

00:00 - The Great Leveller: Finding a Seat
03:00 - Why We Strive in Isolation
04:11 - The Illusion of Strategy
05:21 - The Trap of Echo Chambers
07:10 - The Proof That You Are Not Alone
09:22 - Choosing to Allow Others to Hold the Compass

What we cover in this episode:

• The Myth of the Tortured Genius: Why building in isolation is a structural failure rather than a conscious choice for most creators.

• The Problem with Curated Brands: How many success stories rely on pre-existing advantages and how this renders most advice useless for the average practitioner.

• Fellowship and Friction: Why a genuine community must challenge your direction as much as it provides warmth and support.

• The Danger of Playbooks: How paying for frameworks and answers often treats the symptoms of surface-level stress while ignoring the source of your fear.

• The Power of Witness: How simply being seen and known by peers provides the undeniable evidence required to keep going on a Tuesday morning.

Notable Quotes:

• “It doesn’t instruct from a distance. It wades into the flood with you, creating space in the moment you feel stranded.”

• “Without witness, you stop serving the work and start serving your fear about the work.”

• “The proof community supplies isn’t a guarantee of success. It is the hard, undeniable evidence that you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. In what areas of your work have you been serving your own fear instead of the actual project?

2. Does your current circle provide both the fellowship of being known and the friction of being challenged, or are you in an echo chamber?

3. What is one piece of ‘evidence’ or proof you have received from a peer that helped you navigate a difficult moment?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#CommunityBuilding #SoloFounder #CreativePractice #TheGreatLeveler #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

An invitation

If you’re already in the work, building with intention, and hard work doesn’t scare you - I’d love to have a conversation.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators exists to offer the fellowship, friction, and context many artists, creators, and solo-operators are missing.

It’s not something you can simply join, and membership is currently capped at 20 members (this is not a tactic, it’s about foundations before growth).

If you’re curious to know more, or if this stanza has raised questions for you, please reach out to me on dan@unremarkable.co

Where We Are:

This is Week 22 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND

6. The Great Leveller ← You are here

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

For reasons I still don’t understand, my partner’s parents hated me and without warning, on Christmas morning, they refused to let me into their home.

I was crushed (and stranded), so I did what I have done throughout my life: I called my big brother.

He’s a Church of England priest and was leading a small church in the next town, and he invited me to stay with him and his family.

Later that day we sat down for Christmas lunch, but it wasn’t what I expected. We were sat in someone else’s home at a huge shared table. My brother’s family were running around the kitchen preparing a massive amount of food for a crowd of honoured guests: the coffee shop servers, the shopping centre cleaners, and supermarket shelf stackers. The migrant workers who couldn’t afford to go home to spend Christmas with their family.

Of course, I couldn’t understand the pressure and pain of their reality, but for the first time I knew something of what loneliness feels like at that time of year and the blistering joy of when someone has the courage to meet you in the middle of it.

At that shared table, we feasted, pulled crackers, and told jokes.

And for a few hours, circumstance, loneliness, and isolation, softened its grip.

The extra seat

That Christmas, my brother didn’t give me advice. He didn’t tell me how to fix the situation or send me resources on healing from rejection. He made space for me. He found another chair and offered me a seat.

He showed me I wasn’t alone by making sure I wasn’t alone.

No one earned their place. Status, credentials, or network potential, didn’t matter. We simply arrived, stranded in one way or another.

Although I knew my life was immeasurably more secure than the people around me, for a few hours, we were just friends sharing a meal.

The table levelled us.

This is what genuine community does. It doesn’t instruct from a distance. It wades into the flood with you, creating space in the moment you feel stranded. It pulls up a chair and offers you a seat.

And yet, despite having our own experiences of this, many of us still strive in isolation. It’s not a choice we’ve made consciously. We’re not trying to be tortured geniuses facing the world alone. We just haven’t named community as something structural.

Not optional enrichment we get to enjoy once we’ve earned it, but part of the very architecture a sustainable practice is built on.

Something that requires intentional investment.

Because doing it your way is the only way, and community is how you find it.

What you’re missing

When you build alone, you’re not just missing emotional support. You’re missing the vital context your practice needs.

Think about the success stories for a moment. The ones with the waiting list, the limited spaces, the high-ticket offer, and the testimonials to match.

Strip away the heavily curated personal brand and what you’ll find is context. People who had a pre-existing audience they could activate (or one they purchased), connections that could open doors, or a safety net that allowed for bold risks.

What feels like strategy is often fortune.

They can wrap it in a curriculum, slap a price tag on it, and collect a handful of testimonials. But their approach fails most people because most people don’t have the same underlying advantages that accelerated their success.

So what do you have?

The extra seat. If you’re willing to take it.

Community is the one thing that can reliably level the playing field. Not by handing you a map, but by wading with you, replacing the fear you woke up with this morning with the quiet relief of being known.

And from that shared table, the missing context begins to find its shape.

Revealing the questions you were missing, the introductions you could not force, and the friction required to make hard decisions. The company you keep become the extra set of hands to bear the weight and ensure you don’t face the work alone.

When it clicks, it feels like fortune. Really, it’s the evidence of a different kind of strategy: choosing to allow others to hold the compass with you.

Not every table is created equal

This is not about forming a cheerleading squad.

If a community only ever makes you feel good or confirms what you’ve already decided, you’ve found yourself an echo chamber.

That’s not a community. It’s a comfort blanket with a group chat.

If you’re paying to be part of something that’s dripping with frameworks, tools, and answers that are too good to be true, that’s not a community either. It’s a club (or a cult).

Though you might get involved looking for genuine depth, the curriculum has been designed to respond to how you feel right now. It might feel like progress, but it’s nothing more than a sophisticated way to respond to surface tension. To treat the symptom, not the source.

Genuine community doesn’t have a curriculum for your discomfort. It sits in the question with you, without an agenda, until you can hear the Oboe’s A once again.

It’s where you’ll find fellowship and friction in equal measure. The warmth of being genuinely known, and the discomfort of being genuinely challenged.

You need both.

Anything else will keep you trained on someone else’s version of you.

Without it, you navigate entirely by an internal compass which, as we established in What Presence Requires, is all too easily bent by your biases and blindspots.

Fellowship is not a nice-to-have.

It’s the whole point.

Holding hope, together

There is one final thing that only community can provide.

Proof.

Sustaining belief by yourself is exhausting. You have to wake up each morning and convince yourself, again, that it’s worth it. That in the silence, the slow, unremarkable steps still matter.

It’s not realistic.

Even this morning I woke up in a hall of mirrors, each reflecting back to me someone experiencing what I perceived as a success I long for. This project loses me more subscribers than it gains. Few people share the work. Fewer still reach out to let me know it resonates.

In my isolation, that silence feels like a personal verdict.

And then I sit down with a member of the Order of Unremarkable Creators and something shifts. We hold creative energy for one another. But it’s more than that. It is the profound relief of being seen, heard, and known.

I hear about their quiet inbox. Their moments of panic. Their struggle to keep the faith.

Suddenly, the silence I woke up to is no longer a sign that I’m failing. It is just the reality of the terrain. Community doesn’t guarantee my success, but does provide the hard, undeniable evidence that I’m not crazy.

And I’m not alone.

And that changes everything about how I show up on any given day.

This is what my brother knew at that Christmas table. He didn’t offer those migrant workers a speech about how their circumstances would magically improve. He offered them evidence: you are not the only one who feels alone this Christmas. Everyone here understands. Pull up a chair.

The grip loosens because you are no longer holding it alone.

Can I get a witness?

You already know community matters. You’ve felt the difference it makes. That Christmas scene isn’t surprising to you: it resonates because you have your own version of it.

And yet most practitioners I meet are building alone. It sits on the list of things to get to when they’ve proven something, when there’s more time, when there’s more certainty.

It doesn’t just leave you unsupported. It changes what you’re serving.

Without witness, you stop serving the work and start serving your fear about the work. When I woke up this morning it knew exactly what it wanted, the safety of the established playbook: a new offer, a waiting list, a thousand direct messages. It even knows how to disguise itself as progress.

Without the people around me, fear fills the space and makes the decision for me. With them, I start to see what the work actually needs.

My friend recently reminded me that art is about where you put it.

A shape is just a shape until it repeats enough to become a pattern, is scaled large enough to alter a room, or is placed in a sequence to communicate an idea. Context doesn’t just frame the art. It determines whether the art can be seen at all, whether its meaning translates, and who gets to experience it.

So give yourself and your work a new context.

A space where your Majesty becomes visible: not just to others, but to yourself. Where fellowship witnesses you, friction sharpens you, and hope becomes evidence instead of wishful thinking.

Art is about where you put it.

So find yourself a table.

And pull up a chair.

An invitation

If you’re already in the work, building with intention, and hard work doesn’t scare you - I’d love to have a conversation.

The Order of Unremarkable Creators exists to offer the fellowship, friction, and context many artists, creators, and solo-operators are missing.

It’s not something you can simply join, and membership is currently capped at 20 members (this is not a tactic, it’s about foundations before growth).

If you’re curious to know more, or if this stanza has raised questions for you, please reach out to me on dan@unremarkable.co.

Where We Are:

This is Week 22 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND

6. The Great Leveller ← You are here

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

We spend our days trapped in the Isolation Economy, constantly measuring our progress against the curated lives of others. We feel wounded, we feel lost, and we feel inadequate. The business world encourages us to fix these feelings with more performance or hollow affirmations, but that only keeps us tethered to the surface.

The power of “and” is a simple, structural necessity. It is the skeleton key that reminds your of your worth. By holding two opposing truths, like being exhausted and still full of potential, you stop the surface level circumstances from having the final word. You move from a state of reactive stress to a place of grounded, quiet truth.

This chapter is an invitation to stop battling your own complexity. Instead of chasing external validation to fill the gaps, you will learn how to use this simple tool to release your worth. It’s time to stop getting lost in your own horror story and start building a life that holds the tension of who you are and who you are becoming.

00:00 - The Skeleton Key of “And”
03:02 - The “And What?” Deflection
03:46 - Using “And” for Self-Regulation
04:36 - The Necessity of Community
07:24 - The Trap of the Internal Dialogue

What we cover in this episode:

• The Power of “And”: Why acknowledging two conflicting truths allows you to move beyond surface-level struggles and reconnect with your intrinsic worth.

• Surviving the Isolation Economy: How to use the simple question “And what?” to protect your peace when comparison and jealousy start to creep in.

• The Geometry of Empathy: Why iron empathy, which holds complexity without flinching, is a better foundation for work than the soft, cheerleading version we often see.

• Why Community is Architectural: How to build a circle that sees the majesty you cannot reach on your own, especially when you are stuck in your own horror story.

• The Living Tension: How to view your life not as a fixed narrative of failure, but as a mosaic that honours everything you have survived and everything you are reaching for.

Notable Quotes:

• “Your worth is not dictated by your ability to feel it in any given moment; it is always present, in the middle of the struggle, the anger, the jealousy, and the tension you currently face.”

• “Not soft empathy that finds excuses; iron empathy that holds complexity without flinching.”

• “The wake doesn’t decide the direction of the boat.”

Questions for the Campfire:

Take a moment today and ask yourself these three things:

1. When you feel the sting of comparison this week, what is the “and” you need to hold to regain your perspective?

2. Who are the people in your life who have the wisdom to hold your complexity without trying to fix or change you?

3. What is one struggle you are currently facing that you need to stop letting have the “final word” in your personal narrative?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning: Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur #IntrinsicWorth #CommunityBuilding #Identity #MentalHealth

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 21 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND ← You are here

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

As we sat gazing across the water, my classmate and I discussed what it must have been like to witness Jesus walk on water when my religious education teacher, Miss Smith (not her real name), decided to stage an intervention.

She leaned over us and presented a string of different theories designed to entirely debunk the event.

We often clashed, and I instinctively snapped back: “and how does that add to our experience of being here?”

The miracle didn’t need my defence, but the moment we were sitting in did. It might not have happened and we can explore what it must have been like, and what it means, all the same.

My question did not argue. It simply refused to let someone else’s cleverness derail the wonder at hand. A question that pointed out that she’d missed the depth of what this moment meant to us.

Later, I performed a heist and stole my internal school report from the head teacher’s office. In it, Miss Smith described me as ‘extremely irritating’. The feeling, I confess, was entirely mutual.

And I look back on our battles with a fond nostalgia.

Irritated and nostalgic.

Wounded and moving forward.

Grieving and dancing.

Lost and looking.

Devastated and full of potential.

Whole and becoming.

If your Majesty is the ground: the truth of your intrinsic and immeasurable worth beneath the performance, your credentials, and your circumstances. Then ‘and’ is nothing short of a skeleton key that can open the door and let it out, every day.

But you have to pull it out of your pocket.

Your worth is not dictated by your ability to feel it in any given moment. It is always present. In the middle of struggle, anger, jealousy, and the tension you currently face.

And returns you to its depth.

Not by denying what’s happening on the surface. But by reminding you that what’s happening on the surface doesn’t get the final word.

It’s the Majesty in motion.

And as protection

On the Sea of Galilee I used it instinctively. The short version: ‘and what!?’

It’s something we should make a habit of saying to survive our everyday exposure to the Isolation Economy. Every time we scroll, feel a pang of jealousy, or face an external judgement we have the power to say ‘and what?’

That person got the job, they’ve got a bigger house, they’ve got more followers, they’ve got testimonials, they’re younger than me… ‘and what?’

That literally has nothing to say about you or your story.

And as self-regulation

That deflection works when it’s just you and the scroll. But there are times when it definitely won’t work. Sometimes we need to create space instead.

Sleep-deprived with a one-year-old, Laura and I were nipping at each other the other night.

Looking back I should have said to myself: I’m angry and I’m really tired. A way of acknowledging how I was feeling, and creating breathing space around that feeling so I didn’t react in the moment.

If I had used ‘and’ as a tool for self-regulation, maybe then I could have avoided a trait that Laura knows all too well: wanting to hash it out on the spot.

Not fun for anyone at 3am.

And as anchor

But sometimes that’s not enough either because you’re too close to the surface tension. In those moments, asking yourself to regulate is like asking the storm to calm itself.

That’s when you need someone else.

Not to be cleverer than you or trade one thing for another (I’m looking at you Miss Smith). But someone with the wisdom to hold two things at the same time.

Back at school, my English teacher knew I was finding things tough.

I remember standing in the corridor outside class one day and she said: yes, you’re struggling and you’re also kind, don’t forget to be kind to yourself. In that moment she held my complexity: struggling AND something more.

While other teachers were looking at how I was performing, she noticed something about my character that completely reframed our relationship. She saw something of my internal worth: the real me beyond the results, waiting to be noticed.

I went on to achieve the highest possible grades in English. The only top grades of my academic career.

My English teacher reached what I couldn’t. And from my vantage point now, I realise ‘and’ is more than a cognitive tool.

It’s a structural necessity.

You are not transparent to yourself

‘And’ is nothing more than a mechanism to remind you that your Majesty has something to say. But it only works when you can reach for it. When the jealousy hits hard, or the comparison spiral tightens, sometimes you’re too stuck to hold what you feel alongside the larger truth of who you are.

In What Presence Requires, I argued that Community isn’t optional, it’s architectural. You need others to reflect back dimensions of your Majesty that introspection alone can’t reach.

I lead a fellowship of practice called the Order of Unremarkable Creators because of this gap. It’s not a celebration society, it doesn’t exist to be anyone’s cheerleader, it exists to reveal what you can’t see on your own.

When you’re building alone, it’s easy to collapse into your own horror story.

But others take that story in a different direction: “I hear you and look what you built last month and you’re still showing up and the people who need this work are already looking for it”.

They create space for the struggle and refuse to let it have the final word.

This is empathy. Not soft empathy that finds excuses. Iron empathy that holds complexity without flinching.

Last week in the Order, a practitioner said “I just don’t execute.”

Every week she writes. She facilitates events. She joins our calls. She allows us to scrutinise her work. She has paid clients and paid bills. She brings pastoral wisdom we’d be poorer without.

The feeling is legitimate. There’s a challenge and a signal worth noticing. And it’s not the final word.

The isolated practitioner is often lost to their own internal dialogue. Alone, “I don’t execute” feels like truth. It’s where you’ll find the hustle, performance, and judgement, waiting to redirect the work we’re actually called to serve.

With others, it’s information. The difference is everything.

The ‘and’ our member needed could only come from the people around them: this feels like failure and look at what’s actually emerging.

‘And’ is more than a tool for internal regulation; it’s a way of helping others see themselves clearly.

When you go from holding your own ‘and’ to holding someone else’s, that’s when your calling becomes a practice. That’s when you start meeting a need.

That’s when you become the English teacher, reframing the relationship, and helping someone else notice who they are becoming.

And who are you becoming?

You’ve already been experimenting with this idea. Our response to the Isolation Economy, forgiveness, dancing despite circumstance, life as a mosaic instead of a fixed narrative, all demonstrate the power of ‘and’ for those who chose to wield it.

When we view our life only looking backward, where you are right now feels like the conclusion. But your Majesty isn’t subject to your circumstances. It’s immovable. Constant. And it has something to say.

Return to Galilee with me and take a seat on the edge of a boat, legs dangling over the water. The wake follows behind, turbulent and dispersing, the vast ocean lies ahead. Your younger self is sitting with you, looking ahead, whilst your older self leans against the railing to your other side looking back.

You ask: who am I?

They respond: and who are you becoming?

Like Dan junior and Dan senior on Parker’s Piece, the company you keep aren’t interested in collapsing your story into the moment you’re in. And it’s true for the people who want to gather around the campfire you’re creating.

People who can honour your complexity; who see what you’ve survived and every shred of potential you hold.

Your calling, and the practice you’ll build around it, is the living tension between everything you carry AND everything you are reaching for.

‘And’ holds the door open.

It invites others into the conversation.

When they arrive, they remind you: the wake doesn’t decide the direction of the boat.

When you know who you’re becoming, you start to see who you’re for.

And the question becomes: what ‘and’ am I holding for someone else?

Where We Are:

This is Week 21 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader

5. The Power of AND ← You are here

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

We are told to define ourselves, project a consistent persona, and dominate a niche. It is the advice of the shortcut sellers, designed to turn human lives into predictable, marketable assets. But when you squeeze your messy reality into a rigid template, you stop being a person and start being an act. You become the loudest voice in your own cage.

Personal branding is often a lottery disguised as a meritocracy. It demands that you discard your quirks and silence your contradictions to satisfy an algorithm. When the formula fails to deliver the promised salvation, the blame is placed solely on your lack of hustle. It is an exhausting way to exist, trading your humanity for the safety of a professional silhouette.

The alternative is to embrace your life as a mosaic. You are not a static brand to be protected or a monument to be carved. You are a collection of fragments. The failures, the false starts, and the weirdness tell a much deeper and more interesting evolving story. It is time to walk out of the temple and give yourself permission to be a moving target.

00:00 - Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader
02:30 - The Insidious Invitation of Personal Brand
06:56 - The Geometry of Your Life on Parker’s Piece
09:30 - Brand as Monument vs. You as Mosaic
12:12 - Three Questions to Illuminate the Mosaic

What we cover in this episode:

• The Cult of the Guru: How trending frameworks and aesthetic templates sacrifice your authentic voice for the sake of empty engagement.

• The Lottery of Meritocracy: Why the promise of visibility and revenue is often a rigged game designed to extract your time and security.

• The Myth of the Silhouetted Creator: The danger of carving yourself down to fit an algorithm and the exhaustion of maintaining a curated avatar.

• Life as a Mosaic: Shifting from a fixed, brittle narrative to an evolving interpretation of your history where every fragment finds its place.

• The Three Questions: Moving away from sanitised business labels toward the heart, the history, and the service that define your actual mythos.

Notable Quotes:

• “When the formula inevitably fails to capture the nuance of your actual life, the cult doesn’t take the blame; it simply tells you that you didn’t grind hard enough.”

• “You are not a brand; you’re a mosaic, still placing the pieces.”

• “The full story? The grief, the resilience, the apparent chaos? It’s not a liability. It is the thing.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. What parts of your own story have you been hiding or silencing because they do not fit into the professional template you think you need to maintain?

2. If you stood on your own version of Parker’s Piece and spoke to your future self, what would that version of you say about the work you are choosing to do today?

3. How would your practice change if you stopped trying to build a ‘monument’ and started treating your life as a living, moving mosaic?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning: Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Authenticity #PersonalBrand #CreativePractice #Humanity #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 20 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader ← You are here

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

It happens constantly. Someone asks what the book is about, or what my work is for, and the answer comes out incomplete. Messy. Lacking the polish of a rehearsed line.

The shortcut sellers would say I have a communication problem. They would have it scripted and ready, neatly redacting my past into a definitive promise about my future. And yours too, for a price.

And it’s a tempting solution. Why wouldn’t I want to settle into some certainty?

But this incomplete answer is not a failure of communication. It’s a failure of the question and the constraints it demands as it collides with a mythos it can’t contain.

People expect a clear and definitive answer. It gives them the security of being able to quickly categorise you and whether you are worth their time. They want to scan the bio line and make a split-second decision.

But I’m still mid-paragraph.

The context demands certainty. It wants me to define myself clearly, project a consistent persona, dominate a niche. This book defies all three.

And despite your best efforts, you do too.

There’s no problem with your story, you just don’t fit the template on offer. The beating heart of your practice isn’t out there waiting to be boxed in, wrapped in a sentence, or confined by an elevator pitch. It’s found on a limitless canvas where every fragment of your story can find its place.

But before we forge that path, we need to drop a bomb on the detour. And if you’re out there serving the work, you’ll have been drawn to its insidious invitation.

Personal brand.

Yay! I’m a brand

I’m calling it. Personal brand is a cult.

First, you submit to the gospel of a chosen guru or a trending framework, adopting their aesthetic and sacrificing your voice on the altar of their proven template. The promise of salvation, of visibility, revenue, and relevance? Simply a matter of compliance and relentless hustle.

You can even ascend closer to the founder themselves, for a nice juicy fee.

Here’s what they don’t want you to know (and perhaps can’t admit themselves): this ecosystem is a lottery disguised as a meritocracy.

It requires hundreds to burn up just to produce the handful of glossy testimonials used to recruit the next batch of lost souls. When the formula inevitably fails to capture the nuance of your actual life, the cult doesn’t take the blame. It simply tells you that you didn’t grind hard enough.

And it gets worse. I’ve seen countless creators become evangelists for personal brand. They continue to carve themselves down to a recognisable silhouette, discarding the messy, vibrant pieces of their humanity that didn’t fit the algorithm, and choosing quirks in their story that get clicks. They trade the service they once provided for systems that ‘guarantee’ results, willing hostages to the dogma of their own self-appointed niche.

Congratulations, you’re a cult leader.

And here’s its darkest joke: it doesn’t even matter if anyone actually follows you. Whether you command an audience of ten thousand or speak entirely into the void, the trap snaps shut all the same. You become the undisputed king of your own prison empire: trapped by a story you must maintain, and enslaved by the idea that if you can just cling on long enough, grind hard enough, and be consistent enough, eventually they’ll recognise your magnificence.

This path demands that you trade the wild, unpredictable terrain of a true calling for the sterile, predictable safety of a rigid system and a paint-by-numbers story. And that’s great, assuming you want everyone in your field to feel like a threat (because you all sound the same), to self-censor, and to befriend so you can pitch. It’s the right call if you’re willing to bury the weirdness that makes you compelling because it doesn’t fit your designated content pillars.

You can try, but you can’t dance while chained to the spot.

The shadow of all this is that these middle managers of the Isolation Economy know you almost certainly won’t make their testimonials board, but they’ll willingly extract wealth, security, and valuable time from you all the same. The good news is that the security of the corporate climb is already waiting with loving arms.

To follow this path is to lose yourself to the exhausting project of remaining “on brand” and convincing others to follow you. It will suffocate your story as you maintain the illusion that you have resolved your past and figured out your future.

To break free you have to walk out of the temple and leave your polished avatar at the altar and give yourself permission to be a moving target: a complex, evolving human being whose best work is found outside the categories the market wants you to choose.

Personal brand can work, for some people, for some of the time, but it demands a brittle kind of certainty that’s destined to shatter as your mythos tries to break free.

The Mosaic Self

In 2011 I was standing on Parker’s Piece in Cambridge with a friend, staring down the barrel of my first redundancy.

Using the geometry of the park, he asked me to think of my life along a line, with the present me standing in the middle. We walked backward to speak to my younger self. What does your unwounded, uncynical self have to say to you? Then we walked forward to meet the future version. What does the one who has made it through have to say?

The present Dan was sitting with grief and dead ends, feeling like a failure. But Dan junior had a wide-eyed reminder: the world is big and full of surprising things to explore. And Dan senior had made it through to the other side. Those experiences were so long ago that he barely thought of the specifics anymore. But he was grateful for them, and for how they had shaped the steward he was to become.

It was the first time I understood that my storyline is not a fixed narrative.

The same story can be true in multiple ways simultaneously. Dan junior, present Dan, and Dan senior were all looking at the same life, and all of them were right.

Life. Viewed as a mosaic. A collection of disparate pieces working together to tell a different and evolving story. Each version of myself holding different fragments that revealed a clearer picture, not of who I was, but who I was becoming.

It’s actually a skill we’ve all practiced. One that personal brand hijacks.

Think about the last time you updated your CV (Resume for my international readers). You read the role specification and tailor your story for a line of best fit. You amplify what is relevant and turn the volume down elsewhere. You tell a curated version of the truth in order to support your ambitions. Applying for a job gives the story of your life permission to become fluid.

A personal brand demands the same thing. But in that world, the context doesn’t end when the business closes its doors at the end of the day. And you can’t just hand in your notice when you’re ready for a new challenge.

And it carries the same risk too: if we are successful (but not careful), that curated version becomes canon. A professional brand with new walls to live within.

Here is the difference. A brand is a monument. You carve it, maintain it, and occasionally update it. The cracks and imperfections that don’t immediately support whatever story we’ve decided to tell are scrubbed from the record.

But you are not a brand, you are a mosaic. Still placing the pieces. Every fragment feels lost: the redundancy, the false start, the career that looked like chaos, until you stand back far enough to see the story unfolding. Where everything finds its place.

The mosaic is your personal mythos: the living interpretation of your story that holds every fragment, true in multiple readings at once, discovered rather than decided, and the antithesis of personal brand. It’s not something you build, project, and protect. A personal mythos is something you find by looking honestly at everything you’ve been.

By now, you know my story. Some would say that I’m a failure. And honestly, from certain angles, it is true. Others see a survivor, someone with extraordinary breadth, and a resilience that only comes from fighting for your feet when the ground has fallen away. Someone with the capacity to sit with people in their difficulty and give their experience a name precise enough that it loses some of its grip.

Two completely different ways to see the same story. Both are true. The question I need to ask, and you do too as you consider the fullness of your story, is: which one do I want to live in?

And if you need a second opinion, what would future you have to say?

Honour Every Fragment

Imagine standing where I stood on Parker’s Piece. The work you’re serving today, a person waiting just ahead of you on life’s line. They are disinterested in who you are today, chained to the moment and all its worries. No, they’re asking something different.

Who are you becoming.

The answer is unlikely to fit on a business card, or be pithy enough to impress the scrollers. Your personal mythos contains too many fragments, too much depth, breadth, and possibility for that, and that’s exactly why it’s something you can build your practice around.

So unlike the certainty sellers, I’m not going to ask you to define anything. Instead I’d like to offer three questions to help illuminate the mosaic. Not to build something new, but to see what’s already there:

A question of your heart: What do you want to do?

Forget should/must/need to do. This is a question of emotional pull and what moves you. The pathos or ‘itch’ of your story.

A question of your history: What have you experienced?

This is not about credentials and what you’ve achieved, it’s about your credibility and the scars you’ve earned. The ethos or ‘stitch’ of your story.

A question of your mind: Where can you serve?

This is about how your experience, skills, and gifts can rise to meet a real problem others are facing. The logos or ‘pitch’ of your story.

Yes, I know, this is begging for a Venn diagram where the answer is revealed in the middle, but that would only serve to stylise and sanitise a searching of the soul that simply cannot be contained by a template. Instead, imagine the endless canvas, notice a few fragments, and consider where you might place the ones you didn’t think had a home in your story.

Ultimately, you do not need to have made a final decision about your past before you can offer something real. You do not need to have sectioned things away into neat, marketable boxes. The full story? The grief, the resilience, the apparent chaos? It’s not a liability.

It is the thing.

Today, you are not a conclusion.

You’re mid-paragraph.

And you can choose the next line.

Where We Are:

This is Week 20 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Congratulations, You’re A Cult Leader ← You are here

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

We often spend our lives mourning the versions of ourselves we expected to become. We grieve the power, the clarity, the career path we were promised, believing that unless we can recover some former state, we have nothing left to offer. This obsession with what has been lost acts as a wall, separating us from the reality of the work that is waiting right in front of us.

The business world pressures us to seek external validation and wait for perfect conditions before we take our next step. It tells us that if we cannot fill the cathedral, we should remain silent. This is a lie. When we stop trying to reclaim a past that will not return, we discover that our current circumstances, no matter how rough or broken, have granted us a new, more authoritative voice.

This episode is an invitation to stop waiting for restitution. Your purpose is not found in the rear-view mirror of what you have lost or the hypothetical future you were told to chase. It is found in the simple, honest act of serving the person in front of you. You do not need to be perfect to begin; you only need to notice that you can.

00:00 - The Silence of the Lost Instrument
02:22 - Finding Beauty in the Gravel
03:01 - The Myth of Waiting for Restitution
04:29 - The Fierce Defiance of the Dance
06:41 - The Founder’s Dilemma: Who Am I Now?
12:01 - Three Reflections for the Week

What we cover in this episode:

• The Myth of Recovery: Why waiting for your old confidence or career to return is a trap that keeps you from your actual work.

• The Anatomy of the New Instrument: How your scars and failures provide a unique, gravelly resonance that technical perfection can never replicate.

• The Architecture of Defiance: How to ignore the need for external validation and choose to serve others right in the middle of your mess.

• The Identity Crisis of Success: How to navigate the silence after an exit or a major change, and why your next step is likely something quiet and real.

• The Servant’s Call: A reminder that your best work is found by looking at the person in front of you, rather than the crowd you hope to impress.

Notable Quotes:

• “The tide will not return what’s been washed away. It won’t repair what’s been broken, fulfill the prophecy, or restore lost confidence.”

• “The rougher edge is not your disqualification. It’s your resonance. Your invitation.”

• “You do not need to wait for the old soaring clarity to return. You do not need to claw back what you deserved or make up for what’s been lost before you are allowed to serve.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. What old version of your career or identity are you still mourning that keeps you from starting today?

2. Looking at your current, imperfect circumstances, what unique texture or depth has your history added to your work?

3. If you stopped looking at the imaginary auditorium, who is the one person right in front of you who needs your help this week?

Join the conversation: Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning: Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Purpose #Authenticity #CreativeGrief #Service #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 19 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power of genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be ← You are here

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

Once, her voice could fill cathedrals.

But it’s been decades since she sang like that.

The reality of what changed matters far less than the profound silence that followed. My mum’s instrument was more than a skill: it was part of her identity, part of the fingerprint she left on the world. The voice that taught my sister and me to harmonise in the back of a Mitsubishi Space Wagon as we rolled through Essex blasting out the latest Amy Grant cassette.

She got to decorate the lives around her with melody, and when words failed, she would sing. When it abandoned her, she didn’t just lose something others admired: she lost part of her ability to grieve, to express joy, and to serve others.

On her 75th birthday, the family gathered to celebrate, and my brother Michael pulled out his phone and played a recording. It was my mum, singing at a friend’s wedding in 1987.

To spend a few minutes with the composer of my childhood was, all at once, a reminder of what’s been lost and a sacred moment.

Recently, my wife, my son, and I went on a cruise with my mum and dad, and one evening I heard singing drifting in from the balcony.

It was soft. Unhurried.

I turned to see my son sat with his Nana, as she sang to him as she once sang to me.

It wasn’t the voice I remembered. The soaring clarity and raw power of the old days hadn’t returned. There was no healing here, this was something new. Rougher. Deeper. It caught on certain notes, carrying a gravelly texture it had never possessed before.

And it was beautiful.

My mum isn’t the singer she wants to be, but in her hands she holds a new instrument. It might not fill cathedrals, but what does that matter? This voice serves a new audience, carrying comfort, joy, love and grief as it always did.

And it can create new, beautiful memories for me and my son.

Instruments old and new

To live under the bitter weight of what we deserved, how things should have turned out, or what we’ve lost, is to raise the wall between who you are and who you’re called to be right now.

To live frozen in a story that has no right to control what you do next.

The tide will not return what’s been washed away: it won’t repair what’s been broken, fulfil the prophecy, or restore lost confidence, energy, or the career you were promised. It’s why your calling isn’t back there. It’s right here, right now, in the very next step. Whatever you’re facing.

If you wait for restitution, you’ll wait forever, and the new instrument you already hold will be left unplayed. And years from now you’ll say ‘I missed it, again’.

My mum sang regardless of the circumstance, the lost gift, and the grief of it. She sang without asking whether she was good enough. She sang to the person in front of her, simply because it felt natural to do so. She sang, not in the absence of the challenges she’d faced, the wounds she carries, or the things she’d lost, but despite them.

And you can too.

Remember, there is nothing to add, no external validation you need, and no flaw that’s deep enough to stop you from beginning.

Lord of the dance

In 1963, the English songwriter Sidney Carter penned a hymn that echoed through damp school halls and village churches for decades: Dance then, wherever you may be.

It sounds simple, almost naive. Yet beneath it sits a fierce, pastoral defiance.

To dance wherever you may be is to reject the idea that your contribution depends on some kind of external validation, permission, or the ideal conditions. It is the refusal to wait for a fair market, a supportive boss, a perfect platform, or an unblemished record before you begin.

You are called to dance wherever you find yourself right now. Not when the grief has stopped burning or the scars have vanished. Right here, in the middle of this mess.

So many of the practitioners I meet are still mourning the instrument they thought they were supposed to play. The corporate climb that ended in redundancy. The specialist career that fractured into a dozen unremarkable jobs. The exit that felt like a summit, but left them with too much time on their hands and not enough money in the bank. The business that built an audience but cost them their peace.

They look at their chequered history and find a verdict that confirms that they were not enough. Their voice too rough, too gravelly, too broken to fill a cathedral.

But nothing is wasted.

And your voice has not been silenced.

The failed climbs, false starts, and quiet years of rebuilding may have lowered your register, but they have also left you with a unique voice. One that catches on the hard notes, that fumbles the poetry, that drifts off key and yet carries a depth and an authority that technical perfection can never fake.

That rougher edge is not your disqualification. It is your resonance. Your invitation.

The right voice, for right now, and the people who need to hear it.

Found, not chosen

Just this week I sat with a founder who had achieved what many spend their careers chasing: an exit. He built something, sold it, and stepped out of the performance.

But performing for the dashboard, his team, and the company’s valuation, had kept him busy enough to avoid the question waiting on the other side. Who am I without the role?

He’s facing it now.

And in the conversation, almost as an aside, he shared an idea. Not a business plan. Just an instinct. To gather people for a dinner. Not to revel in the mythology of headline exits and catastrophic failures, but to serve those in the unremarkable middle: building something real, without fanfare, who need to know they aren’t alone in it.

He offered the idea as if it belonged to the future. The act of an artist who must wait until he’d found a new way to generate revenue. But the right instrument isn’t somewhere out there ahead of him, it’s already in his hands.

His challenge, and ours too, is to take action with what we’ve got instead of waiting for permission or certainty or what we deserve. When we finally serve the work in front of us we’ll find the next step, even if it’s not the one we expected.

Because our best work is found, not chosen.

Finding your feet

You’ll never find your feet in the story of who you should have become. Your ability to dance is found in accepting who you are. Incomplete, imperfect, and exactly what the work requires. That’s when years past stop feeling like chains, and become harmony lines in the song you’re composing today.

And around that campfire, you’ll notice the audience that needs you now.

It may not look like the life you trained for. It may not win the applause of the crowd or satisfy the people who measure human worth by the size of the bottom line. But it is enough.

You do not need to wait for the old soaring clarity to return. You do not need to claw back what you deserved or make up for what’s been lost before you are allowed to serve.

Take a breath. Feel the weight of who you are beneath your feet.

And dance then, wherever you may be.

Today, my mum gets the final word. This is The Servant Song by Richard Gillard, performed by Heather Dowman in 1987.

Lyrics:

I would love to be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant too

We are pilgrims on a journey
We are travellers on the road
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the nighttime of your fear
I will hold my hand out to you
Speak the peace you long to hear

I will weep when you are weeping
When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we’ve seen this journey through

When we sing to God in heaven
We will find such harmony
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony

I would love to be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant too

Practice Note

Three small reflections to carry into your week:

• What are you still mourning? Name the old career path, project, or version of yourself that you are waiting to recover before you allow yourself to begin.

• What is the new instrument to hand? Look at your current circumstances - the scars, the generalist background, the small audience. What unique texture does this give your work today?

• Who is on the balcony with you? Stop looking at the auditorium. Who is the single person right in front of you who needs to know the comfort of your voice this week?

Where We Are:

This is Week 19 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be ← You are here

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

Many of us carry the weight of broken promises and exploited longings. We are told our scars make us stronger, yet we often find ourselves stuck in their shadow.

When your work becomes an extension of your wounds, you stop creating and start performing. You look for validation in the numbers and the applause, hoping to balance a ledger that never settles. The Isolation Economy thrives on this hunger, pushing you to beat the people who caused your pain, rather than finding the peace that actually sets you free.

The solution is not more effort or greater hustle. It is the quiet, daily, and often difficult decision to forgive. By choosing to put down the need to win and the desire for fair treatment, you stop the cycle of bitterness that drives your behaviour. You reclaim your story from the system and start building something that actually reflects who you are.

00:00 - The Trap of the Evangelist
02:36 - The Failed Experiment and the False Promise
06:29 - Why Bitterness Remains on Standby
09:48 - The Founder’s Noose and Your Lust for Fairness
11:25 - I Forgive, Therefore I Am

What we cover in this episode:

• The System: How your deepest longings are used to keep you compliant and working against your own best interests.

• The Paradox of Scars: Why turning your wounds into symbols of strength is a daily, intentional act of the heart rather than a result of sheer will.

• The Cost of Bitterness: How holding onto the need for justice compromises your creative voice and keeps you trapped in a cycle of competition.

• Redefining Calling: Why a calling is not a missed destination, but a direction of travel that begins exactly where you are standing right now.

• The Practice of Forgiveness: How to move from a place of score-keeping to a posture of freedom, even when the past refuses to offer an apology.

Notable Quotes:

• “When your work is an extension of what you lack, or the wounds you bear, no amount of effort will bring you meaning.”

• “If you’ve spent time, money, and faithfulness in pursuit of an outcome that didn’t arrive, forgive the other person’s role in it, and forgive yourself for choosing it.”

• “Forgiveness isn’t about feeling better, though you will. It’s about accepting that none of us can undo what’s been done, and choosing to tear down the wall between who you are and who the work needs you to become.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. What is one specific, painful professional experience you are still using to drive your current work, even though it causes you to feel bitter?

2. How does your need for success or validation change if you stop trying to “beat” the people or systems that once let you down?

3. What does it look like for you to adopt forgiveness as a daily posture today, rather than a one-time event?

Join the conversation:
Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning:
Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#Forgiveness #Healing #Authenticity #CareerGrowth #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 18 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power of genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am ← You are here

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

In the other, my professional plan to become a police officer.

And before me was a former police-officer-turned-evangelist speaking at a Christian youth festival.

I asked him how he had balanced the calling with the profession. His response: forget the profession and explore the call. He made it irresistible, asking me to join the gap year programme of the charity he represented, after which I’d become his apprentice and we would travel and preach together.

The prophecy was being fulfilled. Of course I accepted.

Six months into that year, the charity asked me to rise again. They called me and said: Dan, we need an evangelist. The mission was to serve at a major theme park to help lead a sort of interactive Christian art space. Honestly, I’m not going to waste any words trying to make sense of how weird this project was.

What I do want to share are the living conditions. The charity rented a small house for me and a small team. Every room was filthy, full of damp and mould. The owner threatened us with violence if we ever opened the dining room door. It was a putrid hovel, next to a drug trafficking hotspot with a queue of users waiting at the door.

Bear in mind that I was paying to participate in this gap year, and someone from the charity had viewed the house and deemed it appropriate for three young men. As you can imagine, I had things to say. Their response: we live by faith, and this is sometimes what it looks like. You’re a man of faith, aren’t you, Dan?

Of course I was. So I remained on the frontline. After all, I would soon take my place as a travelling evangelist.

But that didn’t happen. The policeman turned preacher decided to leave the organisation, and my opportunity left with him.

That summer I returned to the same festival. The charity had appointed a new leader who wanted to meet me. Looking back, I realise he was only a few years older than me, but he was a giant of faith in my eyes. He expressed regret about how I’d been left in limbo and apologised that I’d been convinced to participate in what was now widely regarded as a failed experiment.

He knew my story, he knew my calling, he knew what I had endured, and he made me an offer. I was to join him as his apprentice so we could travel and preach together. There was one condition: serve on the gap year programme for another year. I’ll never forget what he said: you need to earn your stripes, Dan.

After six months, all communication ceased. After another five, I finally got a call. He told me I had earned my stripes. He also told me he was too busy to take on an apprentice. I needed a new plan and I had four weeks to find one.

Man of faith.

Earn your stripes.

We need an Evangelist.

These are the words of the Isolation Economy wearing a crucifix. They had stories to craft, money to raise, and a bottom line to satisfy, so they used God-shaped language to guide my emotional response and keep a young man compliant and available.

They didn’t provoke my pain, but they still leveraged the longing of the heart.

For the next few years I tried to make the calling stick. I became a youth ministry intern, led a small community church, and continued to live by faith. I slid into loneliness and debt, eventually moving home and crying in a pub garden with my Dad.

He bailed me out. I landed a youth ministry job in Cambridge and spent the next four years serving the work and paying him back.

Will is not enough

As a 43-year-old, I spend more time in this story than I’d care to admit, and revisiting it reveals a measure of bitterness I still find difficult to process.

Yes, I write from the rubble. My scars are symbols. Without them, I’d have nothing to say.

And that is why this chapter is harder to write than most. Because ‘scars are symbols’ is true and the bitterness remains. Pain and purpose fighting for the same space.

You’ve felt this too. Not just the wound, but the paradox of it. Something that shaped you and still makes you quietly furious. The weaponised performance review. The mentor who moved the goalposts. The leader who claimed their applause based on your work. The promotion that was promised but never honoured. The person who saw your longing and used it for their gain.

The world tells you your scars make you stronger. And it’s true: you can be a better boss, a kinder friend, a more emotive artist because of what you’ve survived. But turning your wounds into symbols isn’t an act of sheer will. It’s a daily decision of the heart.

Otherwise your work amplifies your wounds instead of who you are. When your work is an extension of what you lack, or the wounds you bear, no amount of effort will bring you meaning.

Your output doesn’t balance the ledger or determine your value. It never has.

I needed to forgive

One day, the youth charity leader came to speak in Cambridge. I was there but couldn’t face him and left early. Years later our paths crossed again. In my search for peace I’d convinced myself that I should apologise for any bitterness I’d held against him and the organisation, so I waited for a conversation.

As he approached me, I was stunned by what he said: oh, you’ve decided not to be rude this time, have you?

In the years since, his star has risen and his influence grown. He leads an international charity, writes books, speaks at conferences, and shapes minds. Me? I went on to experience five redundancies in a decade and even today, find it hard to shake the feeling that I’m a failure. The one who doesn’t have enough faith, who’s always too late, and now too old.

Bitterness. All too easy to find if I cared to look.

Though those things often feel true, the Oboe’s A invites me to notice a different reality. I’ve met and worked with people whose stories I understand because of what I’ve lived through. And slowly, forgiveness has been gaining ground on the bitterness that loves to run the show and direct my actions.

Looking back, I didn’t need to seek forgiveness. I needed to forgive.

To this day, it remains the only thing I can control.

You need to forgive

Forgiveness isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a posture, a daily decision of the heart. And it’s required right now.

Forgive the employer who didn’t honour you.

Forgive the coach who didn’t help you.

Forgive yourself for not knowing enough, for not acting enough, for not being wise enough.

Forgive yourself for the bitterness you cling to today, and the narrative walls you choose to live within.

And forgive the system that exploited your longing.

If you’ve spent time, money, and faithfulness in pursuit of an outcome that didn’t arrive, forgive the other person’s role in it and forgive yourself for choosing it.

I’m not just saying let it go. You’re right, you didn’t get what you deserved. But whilst your mind wants to fight for it, your heart longs to put it down.

When you don’t, you lose.

If I hadn’t believed that I was too late in my younger years, I could have gone back to school or trained as a police officer. I could have returned to my cleaning job where I felt content and useful. When I started my business, I could have focused on relationships instead of forcing a sense of scale and parading my success stories in front of others.

But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t know enough, not because I wasn’t aware of my options. But because I hadn’t yet realised that the Founder’s Noose was feeding on my lust for what’s fair, pushing me towards getting what I deserved.

No amount of work could release me from that hunger. Only forgiveness could do that.

Today, you might feel trapped by the walls of your story, but you haven’t missed it. You’re not too old, too late, or too irrelevant. A calling isn’t a destination you miss, it’s a direction of travel that starts right where you’re standing. It’s found in the rubble of the walls by those who choose to tear them down.

The question is whether you choose to continue the story, or write the sequel by forgiving yourself, and those who hurt you.

Therefore I am

You have heard it said: I think, therefore I am.

But my mind wants to show them how stupid they were for letting me go.

My mind wants to become famous so they can experience the shadow of my wisdom.

My mind wants to win, and it overrides the wisdom of my heart every day.

In other words, what I think is not a reliable steward of what my soul needs and what my best work requires.

So instead, I say this: I forgive, therefore I am.

Forgiveness isn’t about feeling better (though you will). It’s about accepting that none of us can undo what’s been done and choosing to tear down the wall between who you are and who the work needs you to become. It’s the daily decision to stop keeping score, to resist the temptation to live according to what we’ve lost and how we’ve been mistreated.

It’s the only thing we can control.

Without it, bitterness remains on standby, ready to flood the space where forgiveness should be, ready to do our thinking for us: driving the desire to win, to overwhelm the past, to finally take what we deserve.

Being unable to forgive (or not realising that you could) is the silent curse that manipulates your message, compromises your content, and makes you a target of the Isolation Economy: forcing you to outperform your past, the system that made you feel alone, and the people who caused you pain. They are your competition and your job is to beat them.

It’s the reason you remain at the centre of your story asking ‘how do I get seen?’ versus ‘how can I see others?’

For me, it makes me think I need reach, when I simply need relationships. To revel in the abundance of one, instead of the dopamine hit of a social graph moving up and to the right.

Honestly, I’m not some zen master writing from a position of inner peace, nor have I satisfied my programming for success. Some days I’ve forgiven the people who wounded me, and some days I haven’t. But I know the days when I feel content, when I feel like I count, when I write with a fire in my heart instead of a chip on my shoulder. On those days, the walls of these stories don’t exist, and so I aim for more of those.

And ultimately, the actions of old enemies were just expressions of the system they were stuck in too. If there were justice to seek, how would I ever find it?

In the end, the deepest, truest, most magnetic version of your story isn’t found in victory.

So today, don’t try to win. Don’t try to be seen. Operate from something new:

Forgiveness.

Practice Note:

One action to carry into this week.

When a troubling memory replays without permission, or when you feel diminished or jealous because of someone else’s success, note it down and remember, that’s not your story.

With a deep breath, say or whisper aloud this short mantra: I forgive, therefore I am.

Where We Are:

This is Week 18 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model

2. I Forgive, Therefore I Am ← You are here

3. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

We open our phones expecting connection, yet we are met with a digital landscape designed to keep us exhausted. The system does not want you content; it wants you searching for shortcuts to satisfy the feeling of being incomplete. One that it manufactured and then monetised. By keeping us anxious and disconnected, the modern economy turns human beings into predictable consumers of its own cures.

This episode explores the mechanics of Isolation Economics. We look at how gurus, monopolies, and even civic discourse leverage your feelings of scarcity to sell you status and belonging. You are being nudged to view your neighbours as competition and your own life as a metric to be improved, all while the system profits from the very wounds it keeps open

The way out is not another digital strategy or life hack. It is a quiet rebellion. By reclaiming your presence and refusing to participate in the game of scarcity, you find that the world is abundant. It is time to move past the marketing noise and recognise that your value is not a commodity to be traded, sold, or exploited.

00:00 - Welcome to the Loneliness Economy
01:52 - The Architecture of Presence vs. The Enemy
02:40 - The True Cost of Isolation Economics
04:04 - From Guru Playbooks to Algorithmic Battlegrounds
06:11 - Practising Abundance in a Scarcity Climate
07:15 - A Rebellion of the Other 1%

What we cover in this episode:

• The Myth of Being Incomplete: How systems profit by convincing you that you are falling behind so they can sell you the solution.

• The Mechanics of Isolation: Why the current economy requires you to feel disconnected from your neighbours to ensure you remain a predictable consumer.

• The Erosion of Shared Spaces: How hobbies, quiet moments, and human interactions are mined for return on investment.

• Iron Empathy: Learning to see the system for what it is and refusing to participate in the cycle of competition.

• Civic Rebellion: Why simply noticing the person across from you is a radical act in a world designed to keep you staring at a screen.

Notable Quotes:

• “The planet-size superstore we’ve built requires your isolation to fuel its growth.”

• “Not soft empathy that finds excuses; iron empathy that sees the system, refuses to participate in it, and helps others climb out of it.”

• “You can be the rebel in a world that settled for less.”

Questions for the Campfire:

1. When you pick up your phone and feel an immediate sense of anxiety or inadequacy, whose agenda are you currently serving?

2. In what ways have you been treating your own creative work as a commodity rather than a form of human connection?

3. What is one way you can commit to a “civic rebellion” this week by choosing human presence over digital performance?

Join the conversation:
Read the full written version and gather around the campfire on Substack: https://www.unremarkable.co

Start from the beginning:
Watch Chapter 1 of the series here:

#IsolationEconomy #DigitalBurnout #HumanConnection #RebelPractice #TheUnremarkableEntrepreneur

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Where We Are:

This is Week 17 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power of genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model ← You are here

2. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

3. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Click here to read the Overture and Movement 1.

Mine rarely brings me joy, relief, or contentment. Mostly it’s just exhausting.

An endless stream of admin, unread messages, little red icons demanding my attention, promotional notifications promising the latest shortcut to optimising life, and social feeds filled with people shouting about their latest breakthrough. And the ads, the ads, the endless provocation of my emotional wellbeing.

I feel like I’m already behind before the day has even begun.

Not because it’s true, but because the system insists that it is so. Humanity decided not to build a home for itself but a superstore, and its chosen language is sales.

It has become popular to talk about digital burn-out and sure, we can blame the algorithm, point fingers at the guru economy, get frustrated with the endless funnels and the manufactured urgency and tell ourselves that if we just find a better way to filter the noise, we will finally find some peace.

But these are just weather patterns of a hostile global climate.

A rising damp that seeps through your pocket, leaks from the mouths of politicians and tech titans, and drips daily through your inbox, shaping the way you feel, giving it a name, and then selling its own solution to you.

Your enemy has a name

In the last Movement, you explored the architecture of presence. Now we face the enemy that obscures it and ask what makes it so hard to stay in contact with who you actually are.

Let me ask you this: how is it possible that you don’t wake each day filled with awe and wonder that you get to participate in the unfathomable story of the universe and instead pick up your phone to anxiously manage your place within it?

Because the climate we live in profits from replacing that natural awe with a quiet, chronic anxiety.

It tells us we are incomplete, and then sells us the very things it claims will make us whole again: status, reach, luxury, and certainty.

It’s called Isolation Economics.

The inevitable by-product of unchecked systemic greed which feeds on lonely, frightened, and disconnected people: the most profitable demographic on earth.

When we are disconnected from our Majesty, we buy the course to prove we matter.

When we are disconnected from our neighbours, we buy the brand to signal our belonging.

When we are disconnected from our own story, we buy someone else’s version of what our lives should look like and call it aspiration.

This is not an accident. It is the system working exactly as designed.

The planet-sized superstore we’ve built requires your isolation to fuel its growth. To turn human beings into predictable, malleable consumers, it must first sever our deep connections. It isolates us. It convinces us that we are in constant competition for scarce resources.

It needs us to feel like victims so it can direct our anxieties and sell us the solution to wounds it opened.

The Three Scales of Isolation

Nobody wrote the manifesto. They just found that lonely people convert. The by-product became the method, the method became the brief, and the brief became normal.

Today, Isolation Economists are everywhere. People who see permission, perhaps even instruction, to bait, manipulate and manoeuvre, because in their eyes, that’s just how the world works.

At the everyday level, it looks like internet gurus naming your fears and using them to persuade you to buy their playbook. They package your insecurity and sell it back to you as a twelve-week programme. It’s not their fault. They are unknowing middle management of the Isolation Economy. Genuinely trying to help, and genuine victims of the same system.

At the commercial level, it looks like monopolies and relentless marketing. It is the steady erosion of shared spaces. Sports hydration breaks sold as premium ad slots. It is the complete commoditisation of being. Every hobby, every quiet moment, and every human interaction is mined for its potential to generate a return. Every data-driven marketing message selling you water to quench the fire it started.

At the political level, it looks like outrage sold as civic life. Instead of town halls and physical communities, we get algorithmic battlegrounds where neighbours are reduced to bitter caricatures in a comments section. Citizens are kept so busy fighting each other that they cannot see the civic infrastructure quietly being disassembled around them. A fractured, frightened population is not an accident. It’s a decision. Freshly tilled soil in which ideological seeds can grow.

Everywhere we turn, we are smashed by scarcity, FOMO, failure narratives, and unrealistic success stories. Our value distilled into metrics, KPIs, and ROI. Our lives judged by our follower counts, revenue streams, and the power of title.

The rising damp has soaked us through, and somehow we’ve been convinced to be thankful for it.

Because there’s not enough to go around, right?

But the PEACE Practice reminds us of something different: the world is abundant. Money, attention, and opportunity are not in short supply. Success is not rationed. And the people who need your specific work are already looking for it.

Isolation Economics doesn’t want you to believe that. It needs to replace abundance with scarcity, your Majesty with performance, and connection with competition.

It needs to make sure you feel alone, have someone to blame, and a product to purchase or a vote to cast.

But when you become present to yourself, and understand the hostile climate, empathy can start to flow. Not soft empathy that finds excuses. Iron empathy that sees the system, refuses to participate in it, and helps others climb out of it.

You can stop blaming yourself for the exhaustion.

You can stop treating other practitioners as threats and recognise them as allies, trapped by the same conditions.

So what do we do?

Remember that you are a social creature who craves connection, not endless consumption. Say it plainly: my value cannot be determined, described, or contained by a title, an audience, or the size of my bank balance.

Refuse to treat those around you as prospects or competition and forsake the podium where you declare “I’m here!”. Instead, notice the person across the workbench and say “You’re here.”

In the current climate, that’s not an act of wellbeing, it’s an act of civic rebellion.

The Quiet Rebellion

If you felt alone, stressed, incomplete, angry, agitated, lost, or simply nothing when you picked up your phone this morning, ask yourself: whose story am I living in?

Without question, you are part of a better story than the Isolation Economy would have you believe, and the choice to be an active participant in it is one that’s waiting to be made.

When you do, you’ll take your place in a rising tide that resists the rising damp. You’ll join a slow rebellion of people who refuse to be categorised, commoditised and manipulated.

That’s where the other 1% belong.

It won’t feel fair. You’ll certainly face the silence of an algorithm that does not know how to monetise your peace.

But you can know pride in a world of shame. You can be the rebel in a world that’s settled for less. You can be the mystic in a world that’s forgotten wonder.

Whilst they’re busy building rockets, we’ll be moving mountains.

Your name might not make the history books. But enough will get to experience the view you created.

What did you feel?

If today’s Stanza has helped you name something, resonated in some way, or made you feel like you want to belong, you might be ready to join a fellowship of practice I lead. If you’re curious to know more, drop me a reply and we’ll talk.

Following the thread: the evidence

If Isolation Economics feels like an abstract theory, look at the market data. Your isolation is not an accident. It is the product.

1. The attention economy’s revenue

The major attention platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok) generate over half a trillion dollars annually. All of it funded by selling access to users’ emotional attention to advertisers.

Meta investor report Q4 2024; Reuters / Financial Times (ByteDance); Statista / Google (YouTube)

2. The mechanism is intentional

Peer-reviewed research confirms that engagement-based algorithms specifically amplify “partisan, emotional, out-group hostile” content. The stated reason: platforms are incentivised to keep users on their platform for longer. Anxiety and outrage are not side effects. They are the product.

Engagement, user satisfaction, and the amplification of divisive content on social media — PNAS, 2025

3. Loneliness sold back as a subscription

Replika, an AI companionship app, has surpassed 40 million registered users. The AI companion market is projected to generate tens of billions in revenue within this decade. These companies build business models that depend on users not finding connection elsewhere. As one analysis put it: “A person who heals and leaves is a lost subscriber.”

Replika (Wikipedia / company data, 2025); callyourgirlfriend.com, 2026

4. The search for connection, monetised

Match Group (Tinder, Hinge, and others) generated $3.48 billion in revenue in 2024. Its busiest periods are in winter, when the absence of a partner is felt most acutely. The product’s commercial success depends on you remaining in search of connection, not finding it.

Match Group annual report; loneliness economy analysis, 2024–25

Where We Are:

This is Week 17 of a year-long practice.

Movement 2: Empathy - eight weeks exploring kindness and respect for self and the power genuine connection.

1. Your Loneliness is a Business Model ← You are here

2. Dance Then, Wherever You May Be

3. I Forgive, Therefore I Am

4. Personal Brand is a Cult

5. The Power of And

6. Community is the Great Leveller

7. Think Like an Artist

8. You Can’t See the View When You’re in the View

Next we explore Movement 3: Action - eight weeks on actually serving the work, thrings to try, and learning from friction.

I’ve found the process of thinking out loud with you really useful because it brings me to a different workbench. It’s not easy to write each week; it costs a lot of time and creative energy. The risk is that I spend so long on the craft that I fail to meaningfully invite people to be part of it. These Dispatches help to address that balance, so I can be of genuine service to others.

Anyway, in today’s Dispatch:

• Are you a creative tourist?

• Five questions to ask yourself.

• An invitation to practitioners.

Are You a Creative Tourist?

Look at your bookshelf. The evidence of the Founder’s Noose in your life is probably just a few feet from where you’re sitting: the graveyard of unfinished books and untested wisdom. The repeated decision to buy the next solution before you’ve even read past chapter three of the last one.

That’s a lift from Saviour / Servant, where I explored how I responded to a period of professional insecurity by frantically joining courses, downloading playbooks, and spending what little I had on training.

I became a creative tourist.

I was dipping in and out of ideas looking for a solution for how I was feeling, whilst simultaneously not committing to anything for long enough to find out if it actually worked.

Like someone looking for their lost keys, I kept expanding the search instead of digging deeper in the room I was already in.

It might not be fear that fuels your inner creative tourist. It might be the subtle, ambient backdrop of professional dissatisfaction, or simply creative boredom. But if you’re a practitioner, artist, or creator, I want to encourage you to start digging and stop browsing.

There’s a book on my shelf called Three Feet from Gold. Of course, I haven’t read it. But the central metaphor, as shared with me, is that many people toil and dig, only to turn back when they are three feet from the treasure they seek.

I’m not advocating for a blind, endless march toward a pre-determined outcome. Sometimes we discover we need to adjust our direction, and we all need to be discerning about when enough is enough. But I think many of us (me included) could be more disciplined about finishing the read, committing to the experiment, and paying attention to what we’ve learned, even if it isn’t what we wanted.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

These questions are completely open to interpretation. Your tourist might want you to jump to immediate specifics and answers, but I encourage you to hold them as tensions until you need them.

Take question 3 as an example: ‘If the tourist wants shortcuts, what unremarkable step can you commit to even if it doesn’t offer immediate relief?’ Look for the spark of energy you feel when you spot a shortcut or an unmissable offer, and then challenge yourself to do something else instead.

• If the tourist wants to be seen, what un-celebrated grunt work will you serve today when absolutely no one is watching?

• If the tourist wants inspiration, what boring rhythm will you maintain this week to deepen your work?

• If the tourist wants shortcuts, what unremarkable step can you commit to even if it doesn’t offer immediate relief?

• If the tourist wants to expand the search, what piece of raw material right in front of you will you mine instead?

• If the tourist wants results, what unvarnished, messy first attempt will you make with the imperfect tools you already have?

In the age of infinite access, it’s all too easy to treat our creative pursuits like tourists on a bus tour: we hop off, take a quick photo of the summit (buy a course, try a new framework, launch a new handle), and the second it gets difficult or requires deep, unglamorous work, we hop right back on the bus and drive to the next shiny destination.

Trust me, the answers you seek aren’t around the next bend. They’re in you, waiting to be noticed.

Unpacking Your Bags

If you are ready to stop simply visiting your ideas and actually live them out, you might want to swap the blueprint for a practice ground.

It’s why I’ve started The Order of Unremarkable Creators: a small, quiet fellowship of makers and independent operators who are choosing to dig deeper in good company.

Take a look, because there’s a warm welcome waiting: https://join.unremarkable.co/ouc

That’s a wrap for today’s Dispatch. You won’t be hearing from me over the next week or two as Sonny, Laura, and I are taking our first vacation as a family.

I will check my messages from time to time, so if you need anything or you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always here if you need me, but I might just be a little slower for now. Your inner tourist is gonna hate it :)

Be well my friends, speak again soon.

Dan

Explore the Order

In today’s Dispatch:

• The social bait and switch

• What you can do about it

Bait and switch

In the last Dispatch, I told you I was breaking up with traditional marketing and social platforms.

Look, I’m not making a lifestyle choice here. I’m not slipping away into the mountains to lead a monastic lifestyle of peace and raw presence. I’ll still be online, but with the right amount of effort.

Any content that doesn’t flow naturally from The Unremarkable Entrepreneur (my artistic expression) or invite people to join the Order of Unremarkable Creators (how I serve others), simply doesn’t get made.

Here’s why:

• Platforms are now pay-to-play

• They demand absolute clarity

• Or they demand ‘attention slop’

Social platforms hooked us on the promise of connection and opportunity. Anyone with an internet connection could be economically mobile, because anyone could be seen, heard, and known.

The trade was clear. We build their platform, they help us find our people. So we gave our creative labour willingly, only to be rewarded with a massive bait and switch. Today, the choice is stark: pay to boost your posts (something every platform is begging me to do) or work for them for free, creating attention slop that keeps people locked in so the platform can sell more ad space.

Someone up there is flying first class because they conditioned us to care about scratching out a handful of likes.

Make no mistake, the platforms know your fiscal value to them, and in order to squeeze it from you, they’ve built a toll booth between you and your audience. Refuse to pay with money or creative energy, and you’ll just have to take a 60% drop in organic reach on the chin.

By the way, the slop works on me too! I frequently find myself absent-mindedly scrolling for no reason other than habit. Can these 20 people really fit into a tiny smart car for $10,000? I better stick around to find out.

Another challenge is that the modern algorithm doesn’t understand human discovery; it only understands categorisation. To post outside the narrow bucket of how the platform has categorised you is like throwing a brick in a washing machine. The algorithm breaks. It doesn’t know who to show your work to, so your distribution flatlines.

There’s a bizarre split personality in play here. The system demands absolute clarity from you (which most of us don’t have because we’re evolving humans), but then demands you create cheap slop that keeps people on the platform.

Which is it, guys: clarity or crap? I can’t do both!

The Honest Tension

I am left with one realistic option: pay-to-play.

I want to say I’ll refuse that too. But here’s the honest tension: how do I reach the person who actually needs my work, knowing that my organic posts will never reach them?

One day I might accept that my work doesn’t need to travel. But right now, I know there’s someone sitting on the other side of the world waiting for permission to be unremarkable. So I’ll dance with the devil on my own terms, even if that means working with imperfect systems that are actively working against me and then putting a price tag on the solution.

And if I have to pay-to-play, I’ll suck it up to reach the other 1%.

My promise to you is this: I’ll be mindful of the compromises I’m willing to make, if any. And I’ll always be honest about it.

So what can you do about it?

I’m in it with you, so I can’t give you answers, but I’ve started the Order of Unremarkable Creators for those who are frustrated by building in the shadows and pressing against a rigged system.

It is a space to practise and shape your craft in good company. We meet virtually on a Monday, amplify each other’s work on Wednesday, and share observations on Friday (Wednesday and Friday are entirely chat-based, by the way).

We are a small group for now, but it’s a place to truly be seen, heard, and known. If you know anyone who would benefit from joining us, please introduce us or share this link with them: https://join.unremarkable.co/ouc

That’s a wrap for today’s Dispatch. If you need anything or you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

I’m always here if you need me.

Dan

Explore the Order