I've been trying to rebuild something I didn't realize was already broken. That sentence landed in my chest this morning and won't leave.
I was walking to grab coffee in Echo Park when a Marvin Gaye song came through someone's open window — "What's Going On" — and something about the way his voice moves through that first verse stopped me cold on the sidewalk. Not because it's a sad song. Because it's a searching one. Because he's asking a question he doesn't expect anyone to answer cleanly.
I stood there for maybe fifteen seconds. Just stood there. And then I kept walking like nothing happened.
But something did happen.
I realized I've been moving through the last few months like a man who knows exactly what he's doing. Like someone who has a plan and is executing it methodically. Showing up. Handling business. Keeping commitments. All the things you're supposed to do when you're trying to build something real.
What I haven't been honest about — not to anyone, barely to myself — is that I don't actually know what I'm building toward.
I thought I did. I thought the work was clear: put the book out, build the experience that helps other men sit with what I had to sit with, show up for the people who needed what I learned. That all felt right. Still feels right, actually.
But underneath all that clarity is something I've been avoiding naming.
I'm tired.
Not physically. Not in a way rest fixes. I'm tired in the way you get tired when you've been holding yourself together through sheer will for longer than you realized. When you've been so focused on not falling apart that you forgot to check whether what you're standing on is solid ground.
The Rebuild — the last session in Dig Deep — talks about this. About how sometimes what looks like progress is just motion. How you can be doing all the right things and still be working from a foundation that was never stable to begin with. I built that session because I lived it. I just didn't think I'd have to use it on myself again this soon.
There's a moment in Kiese Laymon's work where he talks about the difference between surviving and living. I keep coming back to that. Because I've gotten really good at surviving. Really good at adapting, adjusting, making it work no matter what the circumstances are. But living — actually living, without bracing for the next thing to go wrong — I'm still learning how to do that.
Someone asked me last week what I was scared of. Not in a confrontational way. Just — genuinely curious. We were sitting in the car after dinner and the question hung there between us and I didn't have an answer ready.
What came out was: "I'm scared I'm going to build something beautiful and not know how to stay in it."
That's the real thing.
I know how to fight for something. I know how to show up when things are hard. I know how to be present in crisis, in chaos, in the moments that demand everything from you. But ease? Stability? The version of life where things are actually working and you get to just — exist inside that without waiting for it to collapse?
I don't trust that yet.
And that lack of trust is costing me something I can't quite measure. It's showing up in the way I hold back in moments that should feel open. In the way I brace when I should be relaxing. In the specific exhaustion that comes from treating peace like something temporary instead of something I'm allowed to build toward.
I don't have a clean answer for this one.
I'm not standing here at the end of this entry with some breakthrough or realization that makes it all make sense. What I have is the awareness that something needs to shift. That the way I've been moving — careful, controlled, constantly measuring — is protection I don't need anymore.
The foundation I thought I was rebuilding on wasn't solid. That's the truth I've been circling for weeks without landing on. I thought I had done enough work to trust myself, to trust the ground beneath me. But somewhere along the way I started building again before I checked whether the soil could hold it.
So now I'm here. In the middle of something that looks like progress from the outside and feels like suspension from the inside. Trying to figure out what it actually means to rebuild when you're not running from something anymore.
I think the answer has something to do with slowing down. With actually inhabiting the moments instead of racing through them toward some imagined finish line. With letting myself rest in the middle of building instead of treating rest like something I earn after I've proven myself.
That's the work for the rest of this year. Not building faster. Not adding more. Just — learning to be still long enough to know what's actually underneath me.
If you're sitting with something similar, the work that's been helping me sit with this is at /the-experience.
Shop the books from this essay
Heavy — Kiese Laymon
Bookshop.org supports independent bookstores — every purchase splits revenue with an indie shop of your choice. Affiliate links; Joseph earns a small commission at no cost to you.