Two days before my wedding.
Hey Reader,
The last email I sent you was the week before my wedding.
A full year of planning that went into that day, and Dani and I were both stoked.
Well… two days before we unfortunately lost our dog, Hondo.
To make a long story short, he had a rare cancer that’s basically impossible to catch until it’s too late. Two days earlier he was swimming and doing his famous 3-legged spin in our backyard.
He was literally in my last youtube video.
But within six hours after we noticed something was wrong… he was gone.
Dani and I were gutted (and obviously still are).
And I walked into our wedding day carrying that grief. The supposed best day of my life, and I’m mourning the sudden death of my best friend.
And I guess the part I wasn’t ready for was how guilty I felt about how I was feeling?
It felt as if being this sad was somehow an insult to Dani, or to the 60 people who flew in for our wedding.
But it also felt disingenuous to just ‘turn it on’ and pretend everything was fine.
So that morning I made a deal with myself.
(I don’t even know where this came from)
I gave myself permission to feel whatever showed up that day.
To release all expectations of how I was “supposed to feel”. I gave myself full permission to be sad, happy, both at the same time, it didn’t matter.
And I swear the moment I let go of that…It turned into one of the best days of my life.
We had the 60 people who mattered most to us all in one place.
I cried and I laughed and I meant every bit of both.
I guess the big lesson I’ve been chewing on through all this is how our expectations block experience.
I’d spent a full year anticipating how that day was supposed to feel. And as I think about it now that’s how I’ve run other moments in my life (christmas, birthdays, business milestones, etc) walk in with a script on how it’s all gonna go… then get so busy checking the moment against the script that I miss the moment.
But life truly opens once you drop the script.
And the guilt was its own version of that. Some rule in my head said being happy meant I didn’t love Hondo enough.
Which is backwards.
Me being happy that day didn’t take a single thing away from him. If anything, our wedding doubled as his memorial and I was able to celebrate harder because of everything he meant to us.
Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind this month. Hondo taught me so much over the years and somehow the dude’s still teaching me stuff on his way out.
A few quick things now that I’m back:
Newsletters
I’m moving to every other week. As much as I’d like to maintain the weekly posting… a good newsletter can easily eat 5-10 hours I’ve been stealing from the main thing (YouTube). When I started writing newsletters, the intention was to have them double for my youtube outline. But I quickly learned the lesson that what works for a good youtube video doesn’t always translate to a good newsletter and vice versa. I love writing these too much to let them get sloppy or skipped.
New videos
Got two new videos almost done:
- Full Hondo story (probably the most raw thing I’ve made).
- Showing you the absolute best books from the 400+ I’ve read. Sorted into 8 categories with big ideas from each so you can easily grab the one or two for yourself that are most relevant. It’s 49+ min… I think my longest video to date.
It’s good to be back in your inbox. Genuinely missed this!
Go hug your dog 🙂
See you saturday.
CK
