Dear Friend,
Last Tuesday I lay on my kitchen floor eating peanut butter straight from the jar, refreshing my bank account and doomscrolling headlines, and thought: This is fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine. Everything is JUST FINE!
I wasn’t fine.
I was lost. Specifically, I was lost in the ‘Land of Financial Insecurity,’ where I’ve been wandering in circles for months now, squinting at spreadsheets like they might reveal some hidden exit. I was also lost in the ‘Land of Global Citizenry’ (you know, the one where everything’s collapsing and you’re supposed to just... what, exactly?), which, let’s be honest, is less of a land and more of a sinkhole. But the Land of Friendship? That one’s warm, solid, clear visibility to the horizon. Thank God for that.
Here in March of 2026, if you’re lost, I think it’s a sign you’re paying attention.
We’re always navigating multiple lands at once. Some earth feels solid underfoot: maybe its friendship, creative work, morning coffee rituals. Others feel like quicksand: maybe its money, purpose, the state of the world. And we’re supposed to move through all of them simultaneously, like we’re fine, like we ‘woke up like this,’ like we have a map.
And the thing about being lost? It migrates. One month it’s our finances. The next it's our relationships. Then it's our work, our purpose, our body, our health. Lost doesn't stay put. It moves through our lives like weather.
But here’s what we don’t talk about: we treat “lost” like a diagnosis. Like something went wrong. Like we missed a turn somewhere and now we’re off course, and if we could just backtrack far enough, we’d find the place where we screwed up and fix it.
We lie awake replaying decisions, wondering if we should have taken that other job, said yes instead of no, stayed instead of left. We carry this low grade anxiety that we’re supposed to be further along by now, that there’s a “Correct Life” happening somewhere else to some other version of us who made better choices.
And the worst part? We think the solution is clarity. We think if we could just see the next ten steps, if we could just get some certainty, some solid ground, then we’d be okay.
Somewhere in the midst of my Financial Insecurity Spiral (trademark pending), my friend Alex texted me an old Alan Watts lecture. I almost didn’t listen. I was busy catastrophizing, running the numbers on how long I could stretch my savings if I only ate toast and gave up dignity entirely. But I hit play while doing dishes (read: the peanut butter spoon), and Maestro Watts said something that made me stop mid scrub. And it began turning this whole ship around.
