The only time I’ve been to Burning Man was 2019 and that year’s theme was “Metamorphoses.” I was part of Minimal Viable Camp, known for their Blinky Things Hospital and Burner Boards.
We were roughly 25 founders & executives spread across 6 or 7 RVs and I took two, three-minute showers a day. The gift I offered folks was these really nice full-body camping wipes for those that didn’t have the kind of setup I found myself in. A woman once came up to me and asked, “Can I just hug you? You look so shiny and clean. And I need that.”
She really did.
We hugged for a moment and as she pulled away I handed her one of the wipes. She immediately burst into tears, hugged me again, and exclaimed with excitement, “You’re Mr. Clean!”
And thus I was given my playa name.
I have so many great memories from that week, but there’s one in particular that I think about regularly, especially lately.
There’s a post office out there. They have all of these nifty postcards that you can send to people and they get them weeks or months later.
I went and got a card and I wrote it to my future self.
I still have it.
Justin,
First night on the playa & you haven’t looked at a computer or phone in several hours.. Stop what you’re doing & be present.
Writing it, I felt gratitude, mostly. For how present I was. How peaceful. The dry cough that had started in 2012 was gone. I wasn’t scanning for threats or worried about what and where I had to be next. I was just there, in the moment. I remember having a defiant strength in that moment.
“Yes, but of course I will always feel this way,” I thought as I wrote the card.
I wasn’t thinking about work.
What stays with me aren’t the exact words. It was the feeling.
Remember that feeling?
This is who you are.
That was a year and a half into my first CEO job. Things at the company were going well enough and while I was away we ended up closing the largest deal in our company history at that time.
Remember this feeling. Be present.
...I didn’t. And I wasn’t.
In early 2018, my ex-wife and I filed for divorce. That same time period, I became a Founder & CEO for the first time. So I never really had time to grieve. Or heal. Or reflect. It was just go, go into the next thing. The next meeting. The next milestone. The next move to a new place four different times. 2020 in San Francisco. Then a new city across the country.
I even quickly jumped from one relationship to the next. I don’t know if I was chasing or surviving. Trying to fill a void that you simply can’t by looking outward.
At the end of that year, I gave one of my first big talks for my company, Spectrum Labs. It was at a dating app conference, at Shutters in Santa Monica. I was so nervous, I don’t remember a word I said. But it was the first time that I was speaking publicly at an event as a CEO. I had done it many times as an employee, but when it’s yours it hits very differently.
That’s you up there.
Afterward I went out on the beach and called my mom. I was lit up with excitement.
Every summer on our family vacation, she and I used to walk the beach at 6am before my brother, sister (LOL - it would be HOURS later for her) and dad got up. Just the two of us, picking up shells along the beach. Maybe the one thing like that that we have ever shared.
This time it was a phone call, and I was on the beach in Santa Monica.
I told her about my to-feel list. Three things I wanted to feel for that year that I had developed after starting monthly therapy. I even had my employees create their own. Basically, instead of resolutions, you come up with the things you want to feel and then work backwards into the rituals, habits, and routines that help you feel those things.
My very first ones were joy, love and peace.
I think it was the emotional release of the anxiety of public speaking that unblocked some stuck energy or memories and we got to talking about joy. And then about her mom, my grandmother. Nana. She passed away in 2012. She spent her life visiting people in hospitals and nursing homes and schools. Hosting Tupperware parties. Spending a lot of time with the church. Organizing community stuff. Holding space for people.
Her name was Joyce. Joy.
And that’s when it hit me. That’s why she was so happy, and so loved. She gave it. In my mind, she is the definition of joy & pure love. I think she just was that way because of how she spent her time. I really wish I could talk to her now, so many questions.
I’m always here.
We both started crying. Then we talked about how much we missed her.
That list, and that call, are what really started me down this whole inward path. I can literally pinpoint specific events and conversations that happened.
Like sparks or breadcrumbs that were planted.
I then went on a main quest for joy, and it led me to Burning Man. And to that card. It also helped me recognize that there are so many other ways to feel love than just romantic. It’s all connected. Ohhhhh the peace I felt in that moment of writing that card.
But I was still locked into the job and the role for a few more years. A seed round. Then a Series A. COVID. A Series B. And the burnout was a boiling frog. It wasn’t just the company pressure of being a first-time founder. It was all of it. Life, you might say.
In 2023, we sold Spectrum. But there was no break. No relief. We pivoted straight into the next company, to take another stab. I was CEO and co-founder, still burned out, and I carried it right in with me.
“Uncomfortably Numb” by Pink Void.
That year I went to a Nate Bargatze show in Nashville. His first time selling out the big arena. I went with some of my closest friends and everyone had a great time, he’s great and I really love comedy shows. But I don’t think I laughed once in two hours. I was completely within my own mind, a blank stare into the empty abyss of my worries and fears.
On Lisa Thee’s podcast, GO! Reboot Your Life, I put it this way: “I’d masked it as well as I could.” Lisa and I were working together back then. “I would have never known,” she said, “that you weren’t on Cloud 9.” The outside was keeping up appearances, the inside was in pain. A nervous system stuck in a state of hyper-vigilance. I’ve told people I felt like a duck swimming in the pond. You see the head, held high, composed, calm even. Driven as he swims towards something. But underneath? Those little legs were kicking frantically and I really didn’t know what I was swimming to or away from.
Then came 2024. Between July and November-ish, my mom got cancer, and recovered. My dad had a stroke. My best friend from college died. My cousin died. My uncle died. I broke up with the girl I had been with for over a year. And in September, about ten months in, I had to shut the new company down. I wrote about that year back in January.
It took me twenty years to feel, not just learn, that you should never let your identity or self-worth get wrapped up in your job. Good or bad.
From September to December I was a hermit. I stayed in my place in Miami. I may have left the apartment only a handful of times. Two of those rare times were visits back home to see my family for the holidays.
A day at the low was filled with these kinds of thoughts. You think you’re the worst. You reflect and overanalyze and ruminate on all the mistakes you made, people you’ve upset or disappointed. You ignore calls and texts. The slightest bit of pressure of anything from anyone puts you over the edge into a state of paralysis. It’s a very gray existence color-wise, if that makes sense.
Thank goodness my vice is/was isolation, so substances, alcohol, drugs etc weren’t part of the picture. But sitting at home by yourself in your own grief can be just as toxic.
I went home for Thanksgiving, and then again for Christmas. My family didn’t really ask questions. I don’t think they even knew how bad I felt. They just loved me. Made me laugh. Played games. And that unstuck a lot of the energy I was holding on to at that time. Really good conversations with my mom and dad, my grandfather and great aunt, my sister and her family. Gosh, I have such great nieces.
I’m certain they don’t know how much those two visits put me back onto a path of really healing myself.
Thank you. Truly.
Even though I had done talk therapy monthly from late 2018-March 2025, I didn’t start the real inner game work until that March 2025. Not that talk therapy wasn’t working...there was just a different path ahead for me.
Retreats for reflection, for healing, for connecting. I went looking for purpose, and to let go of the grief. The past. You even learn about past lives and generational stuff. It runs deep. Woof.
All of them included some element of sound, breathwork, and meditation. And it really worked for me.
On Lisa’s show I said what I wished I’d had back when I was really going through it, was “a big brother... just someone to, you know, say, hey, it’s all good, man, or give me tough love.”
I have two mentors who do that now. They’re both calm, empathetic, rational, loving, strong men who’ve been successful in very different areas. One built companies in tech. He’s a lot more pragmatic, but a highly empathetic leader. The other works as something of a coach, you might say, helping thousands of people. He’s the grounded and creative free spirit teacher type.
They both work with me on the inner game, just through different lenses. A genius, loving-grandfather figure and a wise, older brother that has a ton of raw & interesting life experience.
Mostly, they help me to see myself.
Thank you. Truly.
It was mid last year in working with them on the journey inward, that I started to remember that we’re all many things.
The first thing I remembered was being a warrior and having the warrior spirit.
I got it back. The spark. It felt like regaining my own agency and power. Confidence. There’s a story about being the “scorpion king” that will be shared in due time. When I’m ready.
Then it just kept extending. I’m a kid. An artist. A poet. A musician. A gamer. A creator. A son. A brother. A lover. A comedian. Who & what you are blur into this sea of memories and abilities.
I’m just...me. Comfortably myself.
I’d written a list like that once before. When Nana (Joyce) passed in 2012, I wrote her eulogy. It went something like this.
“She was a mother. A wife. A sister. A grandmother. A daughter. A friend. A caretaker. A visitor. A baker. A seamstress. An artist. A church member.
“And at the heart of it, she was Nana.
“Our Nana.”
In a town of 800 people, she was everybody’s Nana.
On Friday I asked on X, “Who makes you happy?” My own answer started with “Myself.” And there were many others on that list. But for me, it has to start with myself.
Two years ago, I wouldn’t have been on my own list. I wouldn’t even think about it that way. I definitely wasn’t making myself happy that September to December, or in the months maybe even years leading up to it. I don’t know if anyone would have been on that list because of the state of mind I was in.
I’d say I put myself back on the list around May of last year. Specifically May 11th.
Eleven.
I’ve been thinking about these essays, and in writing them I’ve developed something I really like.
The journey inward leads upward, and then outward.
More on the upward journey another time. But what I will say, is that at our core, connecting all of us, is love. That’s all we are, at the center of us.
Some folks say time is the most precious thing there is, I think it’s love. And when you go deep enough, you’ll find it. For yourself. For others. And it’s there, that you’ll discover your journey inward was upward and spiritual all along.
On Monday I posted: “Love yourself so you can give it to others.”
The best way to feel love is to give it. And I want it. So that means I need to give it out more. Like Nana.
From the outside, I don’t think anyone would notice much of a difference. I’ve always been the calm one. Collected. Grounded. Teacher energy.
It’s how I feel on the inside that changed by going inward. Rewired. Like a tree that’s had its roots cleaned, planted in new soil, given light and a fresh splash of water so that the fruit it bears tastes sweet.
Love for myself gives me the confidence to feel safe expressing myself. To tell these stories and share my authentic self, wherever that leads. I never really have, as the introvert behind the scenes. Hiding from threats unknown and even myself in a way. It’s why I didn’t have social media for the longest time. Instagram and Facebook? Still don’t.
These essays are part of the outward. So is the handpan. So is Elfen Town, the virtual space & social network we’re building inside Eleven Dunbar. The children’s book.
When I say it to myself, it comes out like a mantra. Inward, upward, outward.
If you rearrange the first letter of each word it spells...
I. O. U.
Holy crap. That’s an IOU.
And I think I know what kind of IOU it is. Not a debt. A promise to your future self.
That card at Burning Man was an IOU. I just didn’t know it yet. A promise that if I was present with myself and others, that I’d feel the thing I’ve felt so many times before.
Why was I urging myself to be present? To stop? It was because of that feeling.
Joy, Love, Peace.
It took seven years to integrate.
Last Sunday I moved into a place on the beach.
My first evening, I went in the ocean around sunset. And I started laughing. No one around. Just giggling to myself. Me. The dude who sat through two hours of Nate Bargatze without a laugh. I was like, where in the world is this coming from? It was such an odd overwhelming feeling but felt like pure joy.
And then I either thought something or heard a voice in my head, it’s hard to distinguish. But it said “remember.”
Seven years after I wrote that card, I’d finally stopped what I was doing. I was present. And I remembered.
The IOU came due.
When I was a kid in the late 90s, my mom had to yell at me to get out of the ocean. A hurricane was about to make landfall that evening, and we had a two-hour drive home. I used to spend hours just body surfing or wading in the water while the family was hanging out on the beach.
I loved it.
A Scorpio water baby through and through.
I hadn’t thought about that being a part of me in decades. Why did I stop doing something I once loved so much? Even moving to the beach, I never really went... but I’ve always said I wanted to live at the beach.
Now I swim in the ocean every day. First thing in the morning, or later in the afternoon. I meditate longer. I play the handpan more. This being a part of my routine now couldn’t be happening at a more relevant time for my own journey.
I love it.
I don’t know exactly where or what this duck is swimming towards, but I can tell you one thing...
He’s not swimming away from anything or anyone.
Including himself.
In drafting voice notes for this, sometimes my dictation tool would capture my southern accent saying “I owe you” as “I love you.”
Too good.
If you wrote an IOU to your future self, what would it say?