The 3 Things I’m Thinking About — May 23rd, 2026

Saturday morning. Coffee is on. The week is behind me and I have not yet started looking at next week, which means I get a couple of hours to actually sit with what just happened. This is one of the practices I have built into the rebuild. Saturdays do not get traded away. Saturdays are for catching up with myself.

Here are the three things I have been turning over this week.

One. There is a difference between carrying something and being weighed down by it.

I have been listening to the Jelly Roll song My Cross all week, and a particular line keeps catching me sideways. The song is about carrying what is yours and refusing to put it down. Not because you are noble. Not because you are tough. Because it is yours, and there is no honest version of your life where you walk around without it.

I have spent a lot of my adult life trying to figure out which of my burdens were mine to carry and which ones I had picked up by accident. Or worse, which ones I had picked up because I wanted to be the kind of person who could carry them. There is a particular flavor of male ego that confuses being burdened with being significant. I have had a long relationship with that ego.

This year I have been doing the work of distinguishing between the two. Some of the things I have…