On forward momentum

"half my friends are kicking their vices and getting into marathons to exert some control, while the other half are having their second kid"

I was five minutes late to my grad school interview this week. My laptop decided to disconnect from WiFi exactly at the top of the hour. Needless to say, it didn’t help my cold-brew-induced heart palpitations or pre-interview nerves.

It went well, I think. I prepped with a dystopian voice assistant cosplaying as an MBA admissions committee, so I hit all my marks as well as I could have hoped. I closed my laptop, texted my family group chat that it went well, and sat there kicking myself for waiting so long to pull the trigger on grad school.

My friends have endured 18 months of my career and grad school indecision (I ghosted my therapist and they’ve been dealing with the fallout—sorry, guys). Thoughtfulness in big life decisions is great, but my own fence-sitting cost me months that should have been spent on some sort of forward momentum. I was paralyzed by the wide-openness of life at 27: a vaguely unfulfilling career, friends moving to new cities, a sibling getting engaged. I was stuck—unable to decide what to have for dinner, much less clear on what direction to steer my life over the next decade.

This is the paradox of choice in action: the more options we have, the harder it becomes to commit to any of them. Barry Schwartz coined the term to explain how abundance creates its own kind of scarcity—the inability to decide, the nagging sense that a better alternative is always just out of reach. We’re all one scroll away from discovering the life we should have been living instead.

And it’s not just me. Among my friends, taking a risk on the next right thing feels a little like fighting gravity. The general vibe is low. No one can afford a house without their parents forking over the downpayment. Everyone feels a little restless. Half my friends are quitting stimulants and getting into marathons to exert some control, while the other half are having their second kid. The even playing field we exited college on has turned into a free-for-all, and it can feel like I missed the memo on how to keep up.

The broader question for me this year is: What does active participation look like in 2025, when forces outside my control push me toward passive observation and consumption? When a lousy job market and a global dumpster fire can trigger a perpetual freeze state, how do I move forward when every option feels both possible and impossible at the same time? I keep coming back to a line from Whitman that, pretentious or not, feels like one answer:

There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse - unfit for any handiwork or public labor. Action with the scholar is subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth…The world lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I launch eagerly into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next to me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work” - Walt Whitman

I hate it, but we can’t think ourselves into the lives we want. Jack hit on this a few weeks ago too: "Good things aren't born of planning for everything up front. They form as action is taken." They’re both right, I think.

I’m not exactly sure why I finally hopped off the fence & pulled the trigger on applications. Maybe i just got tired of hearing myself complain about the same things over beers with my friends. Grad school feels like one next right thing for me. Writing on Substack with the homies feels like another. Neither of these are grand solutions, but they’re steps—and steps are what keep us from sinking.

So if you’re feeling stuck, consider this less prescriptive self-help and more camaraderie. A little encouragement to stop doomscrolling, stop overthinking, and take a swing at something this week.

Thanks for reading—have a great week.

The competition for our clicks, attention, and time has never been fiercer. More apps, more news, more of everything. Big Tech has centralized the web, commoditizing our screen time and dictating how we consume information. As our online selves continue to age, how do we ensure we’re truly tuned in—not just absorbing, but thinking critically?

Relay is a collective effort to distill information across tech, politics, and culture. It stands in direct opposition to the hollow drift toward cheap consumption, regrettable minutes, empty engagement, and a distorted understanding of the real world. It’s a refusal to let algorithms erode our ability to think critically—and an invitation to participate meaningfully, despite apathy becoming the social norm.

We’re focused on more signal, less noise. Tag along (it’s free).