I’ve been on a John Steinbeck kick of late. Started with Cannery Row (an all-time favorite), moved on to Tortilla Flat (also delightful), and last week, I blasted through Of Mice and Men in one sitting. That one devastated me. Goddam.

It’s funny how when I’m immersed in a work project, as I currently am with writing the Lightpage manifesto, whatever I happen to be reading becomes part of the larger conversation. Inspiration ends up coming from places I’d never expect. In this case, I’m finding a ton of resonance in Steinbeck’s slices of life from depression-era California, as well as some cool parallels that deepen the themes Kasra and I have been circling around in our conversations.

There’s a deep loneliness that pervades every character in Of Mice and Men. The social structures in this world (economic, racial, marital, etc) and physical environments reinforce that isolation at every turn. It’s every man for himself in this little corner of the valley.

That’s part of what makes George and Lennie so special. Unlike everyone else, these two genuinely have each other’s backs through thick and thin. They stick together. It’s the only real friendship that can be found anywhere in this world, which makes the book’s ending all the more tragic.

Another thing that stood out to me is that these characters talk about their dreams, but in wistful or bitter ways. Most of them would love to own a lil piece of land. Tend it themselves and reap its fruits. And for Lennie, it’s all about dem rabbits. None of their dreams are particularly wild or unrealistic. Nothing that couldn’t be accomplished with a few years of intentional work and saving.

Yet no one seems able to move towards what they want. Not really. They’re caught in perpetual inertia, where instead of taking concrete steps to break free, they turn habitually towards creature comforts. They drink. They go to the whorehouse. They gamble. And when the money runs out, they come back for another month of working the fields. Over and over. It’s some wheel of samsara shit.

But there are glimmers of hope. In the rare instances where these dudes open up to each other and share their dreams earnestly, something in the system shifts. New possibilities arise. Alone and isolated, their dreams feel like escapist fantasy. But working together, pooling resources, they feel plausible for once, like that lil plot of land might actually be within reach.

This is a big part of why I’m so bullish on personal manifestos btw. When you clearly articulate your desire, your vision, and put it out into the world, you tend to attract people who want the same things as you. You create the conditions for connection and cooperation. You make it possible for your dreams to unfold in a way you could not orchestrate by yourself, in isolation.

Last week, I stumbled across a big feature story in The Atlantic called The Anti-Social Century, all about how our modern environments and cultural norms reliably lead to isolation and loneliness. The world we live in isn’t the Salinas Valley in the depression. It’s so much safer, more prosperous, more abundant. Yet by every available measure, our communities, institutions, and sense of social wellbeing are swirling down the drain, fueled by the pull of creature comforts that we pursue in isolation. We’ve engineered vast swaths of our economy to capture and hold attention, to pull humans out of participation in the physical world and into the seductive glow of screens.

In one of our calls, when I asked Kasra what the biggest ripple he hopes Lightpage makes in the world, he said he hopes it helps people build deeper relationships. For it to help people feel more connected to their real world partners, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc.

That’s it. Full stop.

It’s funny. I reflexively expect tech founders to wax poetic about the grandness of their visions, and how they want to reengineer complex global systems at scale. So it struck me as quietly revolutionary to say “no, this tech is meant to help you slow down, and connect you back to the people in your life.”

None of us knows what’s coming our way in the next decade. The only thing anyone seems to agree on is that economically, politically, and culturally, shit is only gonna get weirder and more chaotic and unstable.

In my own life, I’ve been spending less time on screens these last few months (and way less time on twitter in particular). I’ve been making friends locally here in Tucson. Doing lots of in-person recovery meetings and playing pickleball and such. As someone who’s traditionally been Very Online, and who's spent a lot of his life isolating himself, it hasn’t been easy or comfortable to break out of my digital cocoon. It’s like those muscles have atrophied, and building them back up is taking real work.

But the more I focus on my small handful of real world connections, the more I feel a sense of groundedness and stability that I never felt online, even when things were going well with dozens of digital friends and thousands of followers and email subs. Even though the news leaves me feeling unsettled and freaked out about the future, the more I invest in local relationships, the more it feels like we’ll all be okay, regardless of how batshit insane things get in the years ahead. As long as we stick together and have each other’s backs.

After a week of struggling to write something new, I just said “fuck it” and recorded this update as a voice note/podcast without any script or editing.

Anyhow, there’s a cleaned up transcript below if you’d rather read than listen. Enjoy!

transcript

What's up, homies. I'm doing this next installment of the Lightpage Chronicles as a little voice note podcast because I'm stuck in a self-imposed perfectionist hellscape. It's wild how the more I care about a project or the more I'm invested in getting a piece of writing "right" (whatever that means), that self-created internal pressure becomes this latent form of anxiety in my body. It creates this somatic sense that if I do anything that isn't perfect, I'm literally going to die.

Which is really suboptimal because a big part of this whole process is exploration. My whole thesis on writing manifestos is that if you try to write the perfect version you see in your head, it's going to come out flat. You have to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, see what actually resonates, see what all the raw ingredients are. That's how you find those pieces that resonate deep inside you and are therefore more likely to resonate with audiences as well.

It's really interesting that I know this about the manifesto writing process, but there's still something in me that resists showing the messy inner workings. So I'm just doing this voice note version to share where we're at.

Last week, Kasra and I did another deep dive exploration call. We went into it hoping to explore the new story aspects of Lightpage—what is the world that Lightpage is trying to bring into being? That's very much about creating the flip side of the old story coin: what is Lightpage pushing back against? What are the conditions, problems, and forces creating this layer of pain, anger, and frustration that this tool can hopefully help us resolve?

Funny enough, we didn't end up exploring that new story much. Instead, we got into the messy territory in between what I call "bridge territory"—how do we as imperfect humans live into and toward a new story, step by step?

The thing that emerged that feels powerful (though I don't know if this is the final language we'll use) is this idea of a "dojo for strengthening our humanity." Because the villain or compelling old story we identified is that the digital environments we inhabit make us less human. Or rather, they bring out the worst aspects of our humanity—they make us more anxious, rigid, fearful, angry, extreme, and black-and-white in our thinking.

In turn, that makes us less capable of navigating a complex world. It makes us less capable of showing up wholeheartedly in our relationships, less able to show up compassionately for ourselves. The environments we inhabit are degrading our ability to be human.

Kasra and I outlined a series of qualities—human muscles that serve as counterbalancing forces to these digital environments. Things like curiosity, play, compassion, presence, and expression. You can't just snap your fingers and be a fully, perfectly integrated human who magically expresses all these things. But you can strengthen them bit by bit. You can return to this practice of being present, being attuned to your curiosity, taking small playful steps without all-or-nothing thinking.

This is at the core of what Lightpage as a tool and its AI are programmed to do, which brings us back to that analogy of the dojo.

There's something really powerful about this distinction between a gym and a dojo. When we talk about strengthening certain muscles, the obvious metaphor is the gym. But gyms reinforce a lot of the old story energy we're pushing back against. Gyms are very transactional—you go there to solve a specific problem in a solo, isolated way. You go because you're feeling insecure, you want to feel better, you want to be sexier.

A dojo, on the other hand, is more of an integrated environment for physical and spiritual development. It's a place where you're in community with people. You're on your own journey, but you're on a path with a teacher, with a community, with a sangha. It's about a holistic approach to human growth, being part of a tradition, moving toward virtue.

That word "virtue" is interesting. While discussing human muscles (curiosity, play, presence, etc.), we also struck upon the classical virtues—prudence, fortitude, justice, and others. Those aren't quite the same as the human muscles we're after, but they're downstream of this dojo metaphor.

Something else that's been coming up for me: each of us has a choice in how we relate to the digital world, how we relate to the environments that shape us, and how we choose to shape the environments that will subsequently shape us.

One pushback I've heard is that our digital environments are so omnipresent. The problems they create are so large at a systemic level that a tool like Lightpage isn't going to come sweeping in and save the day. It might be a small part of an interconnected web of solutions, but it's not going to solve system-level problems with the snap of a finger.

But at the end of the day, what Lightpage is really pushing back against is individual helplessness in the face of these large systems that are degrading our humanity. Because while they might be doing that at scale, every individual still has a choice in how they relate to their environments and what environments they create.

That's one of the core aspects of being human—we create tools, those tools allow us to shape our environments, and our environments then shape us. There's an intriguing recursive loop there. We can take on learned helplessness, or we can recognize that the defaults aren't serving us and start shaping our environments differently. We can choose to live a more human life, to step into the dojo day after day, and to strengthen those muscles that help us live just a little bit more humanly than if we accepted the default.

I think that's the heart of what we keep circling around—that choice matters. The choice to build those muscles.

One recurring theme through every conversation we've had is that relationships are at the heart of what it means to be human. Whether friendships, partnerships, or romantic relationships, they give our lives deep meaning and help us develop into better versions of ourselves.

So there's this interesting layer where if you think of Lightpage as a dojo for being more human, what it's actually doing is strengthening the muscles that allow us to be better at relationships—and relationships themselves are the real human dojo.

We don't want to build an AI that substitutes for human relationships. The AI is not your friend or romantic partner. It's there to serve you, guide you, help you strengthen those muscles, and set out the path for being a better embodied human in the real world—to be in relationship with yourself, with others, with everything you do in a way that's more open, grounded, curious, playful, and present.

Nothing enriches human life more than being part of an interdependent web of relationships.

So there's something profound here about this lifelong practice, this path of stepping further toward the best aspects of our humanity, little by little, in this metaphorical dojo. So that we can grow our capacity to be in relationship with each other. That's at the core of what Lightpage is after.

In the context of the manifesto we're writing, I don't know that the word "dojo" or "human muscles" will end up being the final language. But it's directionally very exciting for both of us because it feels true to what we're both trying to do as we develop ourselves.

I'll leave it there for now. Thanks for listening. Catch you in the next one, which may or may not also come in voice note fashion. Later, friends.

Sup homies! Welcome to the first installment of the Lightpage Chronicles, where I'm documenting the messy process of writing a spicy manifesto for Lightpage in real-time.

Manifestos gain their emotional power from the interplay of three ingredients: the old story (what's broken), the new story (what's possible), and the bridge (how can we, as imperfect humans, move from one to the other). These will all get fleshed out more as we go, I promise.

This past week, Kasra and I kicked things off by digging into the old stories of tech, productivity, self-improvement, and human flourishing. We’re looking to answer to questions like: How does the modern world hold us back from being fully human? What systemic forces or trends are we standing against? Who/what’s the enemy in the larger story we’re telling? The goal is to articulate what’s broken about the world that Lightpage is entering, framing this status quo in a way that makes it feel both undeniable and unacceptable.

In other words, the old story is about tapping into challenging emotions—pain, frustration, anger, fear, hopelessness, etc—and trying to put words to them. So I went into our first convo hunting for emotional triggers and polarities, those places where Kasra himself gets riled up at the state of the tech industry or wider world. But nope. What I found instead was a dude who’s remarkably grounded, thoughtful, and committed to seeing nuance in every situation. What a scoundrel!

Despite that curveball, the conversation was still full of potential old story ingredients. So my next step was combing through the transcript while paying close attention to my own emotional reactivity. I was looking for things that stirred up my felt sense of frustration, anger, or despair. There are problems my intellect gets excited about, and there are problems that feel like a tight clench in my chest, and that make me want to hide. For manifesto-writing purposes, the latter tend to have an order of magnitude more power.

After highlighting the moments that got me activated, I wrote out a few initial "sketches" around what Lightpage might stand against. I say "sketches" because that's all these are meant to be. Not commitments, just possible directions that we could use as jumping off points. We'll likely weave elements from all of them into something more cohesive later.

Anyhow, here are some quick sketches of what Lightpage is fighting back against:

Sketch 1: The subtle hostility of our digital environments

We’re inevitably shaped by our environments, and the digital environments we inhabit systematically undermine our humanity. They…

• reward and amplify our most reactive, fearful impulses while atrophying our capacity for presence, nuance, and compassionate action.

• position themselves as tools of personal liberation while nudging us into predictable consumer patterns in a thousand barely noticeable ways.

• become the default places we retreat to when anxious, which usually just inflames said anxiety even more.

• promise connection but deliver shallow, commoditized substitutes that leave us more isolated.

• channel the human experience into separate apps, feeds, and interfaces, which leaves us feeling compartmentalized and less aware of the interconnected ecology of everything.

Sketch 2: The memetic virus of extremist thinking

Our chaotic information landscape makes simplistic, binary thinking increasingly seductive. This pattern of extremism...

• provides the comforting illusion of control and certainty in confusing times, while actually narrowing our perspective.

• gradually seeps into our inner dialogue, reducing our capacity to hold multiple truths simultaneously, and making “the war within” far more violent.

• makes saying "I don't know" or "I'm still figuring this out" feel increasingly vulnerable in a world demanding instant certainty.

• follows us into our relationships, where we categorize, label, and dismiss rather than connect with full humanity.

• drives us to swing violently between extremes in our personal growth journeys rather than finding sustainable middle paths.

• transforms us into unwitting hosts for extreme ideas that replicate through us, leaving us feeling hollowed out and used up once they've spread.

Sketch 3: The ideology of human optimization

We've all inherited a worldview, born of the industrial revolution, that treats humans as machines to be improved, upgraded, and optimized. This mindset...

• frames messiness, inefficiency, and uncertainty as problems to be solved rather than essential aspects of being human.

• teaches us to distrust our bodies, intuition, and personal experience in favor of culturally-prescribed "best practices"that rarely seem to work.

• encourages us to chase wellbeing through abstracted metrics, KPIs, and data points rather than through the depth of our connections, contributions, and care for what’s in front of us.

• subtly communicates that we are broken or inadequate in our default state, especially if we’re feeling any type of negative emotion

• creates the persistent feeling that we're falling behind, and that there's always some better version of ourselves just around the corner that will finally be contented.

These sketches aren’t the full story, of course. The real magic happens once we start juxtaposing all of this against a resonant vision of what we're moving toward—rather than just railing against what’s broken.

What’s been emerging in our convos so far, both with each other and with the AI in Lightpage itself, is a vision where Lightpage isn’t viewed as another app for self-optimization, but as a kind of dojo—an environment designed to counteract these hostile old stories, where we can practice a more integrated way of being human. More about what that might look like coming your way next week.

For now though, I'm curious if any of these sketches hitting close to home for you? Would love to hear about how you experience these problems, or if they’re not clicking in the way they’re framed now. Drop a comment or shoot me a message. Your input will def help shape where we go next.

Thanks for reading and catch ya next week! 🫡

Rob

That's how many manifestos I will write.

Why? Because it’ll be fun. Because it scares me senseless. Because I’m on a mission from God. Because I’ve been hiding in a labyrinth of perfectionistic over-planning. Because for ten months I’ve been yap yap yapping about how I wanna be The Manifesto Guy™ while barely writing any actual new manifestos.

Come on, bro. It’s time to live the new story. Leap of faith, baby. It’s time to write.

One. Hundred. Manifestos.

This quest might take six months (unlikely), two years (very likely), or a goddamn decade (oh lord). I don't know. It’ll take as long it takes. All I know is that I’m in it now. This is my covenant, consecrated here before this court of my dearest parasocial internet comrades. But mostly I’m declaring this for me. I’d sign it in blood if I could.

One. Hundred. Fucking. Manifestos.

I will write the manifestos I need to read. Manifestos that grab me by the shoulder and shake me free of the seductive copes of modernity, that shatter the comforting lies I’ve clung to, that make me giggle like a schoolgirl and roar like a dragon. I will be patient zero for the idea that manifestos are magic spells that, when cast with earnest zeal and a sly smile, help us remember that we are gloriously human and powerful beyond measure.

ONEHUNDREDMANIFESTOS.JPEG

I will write manifestos for startups and founders who strive to stand tall in this sterile world of spineless, focus-grouped brand promises. So too will I write manifestos for those ideal clients who haven’t paid me cash money (YET). Along the way, I will write manifestos for friends, for her, and for the causes, communities, and cats I love. Hell, maybe even for my avowed enemies. I will be an equal opportunity manifesto artisan.

*whispering seditiously in your ear* psssssssst. one hundred manifestos

I will write teeny tiny tweet-length manifestos and overwrought novella-length manifestos. I will write manifestos that are dreadfully serious and manifestos that are utterly ridiculous (possibly in the span of a single paragraph). I will uncork the stew of manifesto energy that has long bubbled beneath my fears and insecurities and let it flow freely. I will write in fits of revolutionary ecstasy, and let my work go before I feel ready. I will ship ship ship. Even when it scares me. Especially when it scares me.

Let’s fucking go. The Era of Manifesto Rob is officially upon us.

ONE HUNDRED MANIFESTOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!

Rob Hardy
April 1st, 2025
Tucson, AZ 🌵

There's a part of me I've come to know as Experty McExpertman. He’s that critical inner voice who’s desperate to be seen as intelligent, as having it all figured out, and who’s built a self-appointed career around managing other people’s perceptions of me. He's been in charge of my creative output for the better part of thirteen years.

It is high time for Experty McExpertman’s reign of terror to come to an end.

It all started back when I was still in film school, when I was hired to write for my favorite filmmaking blog. In my mind, I was wildly unqualified to write about film for a website that was reaching millions of people each month. I mean, I was just a lowly film student! So, our boy Experty McExpertman showed up and was like "bro, let me take the reigns here." And so began my decade plus of striving to be perceived as intelligent on the internet. Under his tutelage, I began to read voraciously, and became quite good at regurgitating information in ways that sounded somewhat novel.

Experty took even more control once I launched my first online/creator business. In this new chapter, the stakes felt so much higher. It wasn’t enough to write smart sounding stuff. Now I actually had to sell something if I wanted to keep a roof over my head. I was awash in advice from other professional bloggers and course creators saying that the surest path to traffic and sales and riches beyond measure was to Be An Expert, just like they were. I didn’t see the pyramid scheme nature of the Bullshit Industrial Complex back then. So in response to this onslaught of cultural messaging, Señor McExpertman said "Oh fuck yeah, amigo. Let me take the wheel here. I was BORN FOR THIS."

The truth of the matter is that I've rarely known what I was doing. Not as a filmmaker. Not as a filmmaking commentator. Not as a marketer. Not as... well… anything, really. But I believed, with every fiber of my being, that no one could ever see just how clueless I was. That would surely spell my ruin. No, I had to be seen as intelligent. As an expert. As someone whose authoritative sounding opinions could hopefully Add Value and cement my status as a niche internet microcelebtrity such that I build a business that might finally allow me to feel a modicum of security in the world.

It’s hard to overstate just how miserable it was to live this way. Marinating in a constant stream of “I’m a complete idiot, but I’ll lose everything if anybody finds out” and then wildly overcompensating by consuming ever more information and regurgitating it. I wonder if this is what it’s like to be an LLM. Never having real experiences of your own, because you’re trapped in a story that says if you just combine bits of abstracted information in the right way, then people will accept you. Oof.

That's another thing about Experty McExpertman. My impulse is to ridicule him. I mean, why else would I give him such a stupid name. But the truth is that Experty has only ever wanted the best for me. He's an amalgamation of survival strategies for a scared little boy trying his best to feel safe in a transactional world that massively overvalues performative expertise. The longer I stay in this game, the more I realize that the only winning move is to shower Experty McExpertman with compassion and acceptance, even in spite of all the harm he's caused with his wayward strategies. The move is not to exile him, but to invite him into the conversation.

This is the heart of conversational creativity. To be with what is, exactly as it is, and exactly as you are. To express what’s true in your lived experience, however imperfectly, and then listen for what comes back. When I listen to Experty—like, deeply listen—I can’t help but soften, to grieve, and to laugh a little bit at how absurd the whole charade has been. And even though he’s uncomfortable admitting it, Experty agrees that the old ways are no longer working, and we need a more conversational path forward, together.

All the best manifestos I've written have been birthed during a moment of personal frustration and turmoil.

The Ungated Manifesto came after hitting yet another wall with the promises of the "creator economy." The non-coercive marketing manifesto was a desperate reckoning with my relationship with marketing. And The Source was about making peace with my endless capacity for self-sabotage during a particularly challenging season of life. These manifestos helped me make sense of some underlying distress I could no longer ignore, then chart a path away from it. They were all written, first and foremost, for myself, to satisfy my personal hunger for self-renewal.

As it so happens, all three of those pieces resonated with a ton of other people, too. They’re easily my most “popular” and widely-read pieces of writing. They’re the ones people routinely tell me meant something to them, even years after publishing. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

There are two reasons I bring this up. First, I think there's a conception that writing a manifesto is something you do after you’ve figured it all out, when you want to convince other people of the answers you've arrived at. Frankly, I think if that's your starting place for writing a manifesto, you've already lost the game. A manifesto is an energetic transmission more than some kind of rhetorical trick. Your pain and frustration and desperation are core ingredients that charge the manifesto with vital energy. If you feel that you've solved your problems, and have all the answers, your manifesto won't carry the energy required to reach people who are stuck in those problems themselves. Being in the game yourself helps you speak in a way that resonates. It helps position you not as a guru with answers, but as a leader. Someone who’s in the mess with you, instead of above it.

The second reason I'm on about this is because the "conversational creativity" manifesto that I'm setting out to write in public is Very Much one that I need for myself at this moment in life. For the past decade, perfectionism and self doubt and imposter syndrome have whooped my ass to such a degree that I often wonder if I should give up on writing and creativity as a vocational path. Maybe just get a job at a coffee shop or bookstore or something. But alas, I know I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't keep doing this work. Something in me has to write. Has to keep exploring the frontiers of these ideas and stories that spark me to life.

I've had a few glimpses of the conversational creativity paradigm over the last year or two. Moments where I was able to tune into some larger spark of inspiration, and just flow with it as if it were a conversation, rather than a performance where I had to “do it right” in order to prove my worth. Moments where the self-doubt receded into the background, where the rigidity and fear melted away, and I was just able to deepen into relationship with something.

There was spell of about eight weeks where I wrote a new poem every single day. Most of them weren’t good, but they were sincere expressions of something that was (and still is) alive for me. The other example is writing The Source a few months ago. When I surrendered what I thought that manifesto should be, I encountered a voice deep within me that led somewhere unexpected and beautiful. Conversing with that voice for six weeks, back and forth, led to a piece of writing I’m more proud of than anything I’ve ever written.

All of this is to say, I want and need more conversational creativity in my life. I know it's possible for me. I know the wisdom for how to do this, how to embody it, lives inside me right alongside all of my self-doubt and fear. The purpose of writing the manifesto, therefore, is to help me remember what I already know, and act on it more often.

So yeah, I'll be unpacking more of what conversational creativity is in coming posts. Gonna flesh this thing out, piece by piece, conversation-style. But for now, just wanna emphasize this point again. There's a heck of a lot of power in getting intimate with your deepest frustrations, then writing the manifesto you need to read yourself.

There’s a manifesto I've been dreaming of for the better part of three years. But I’ve never felt "ready" to write it. Still don't.

So over the next week, I'm going to write the first “living draft” of this manifesto in public. Piece by piece. Along the way, I’ll be stress testing my own framework for how to write manifestos that are bursting with transformational energy. Basically, I’m “dogfooding” my own process, as the tech folks would say. It's hard to overstate how nervous and anxious this makes me.

The manifesto in question is about conversational creativity. The core idea is that our job as creatives—and as humans more broadly—is to pay close attention to what sparks us, then step into conversation with it.

A conversation by its nature is unpredictable, alive. It consists of two or more parties, each with their own will, each with their own lineage and root system of unfathomable depth and complexity. A conversation is more than the sum of its parts. The magic lives in the space between participants. In the dynamic tension and spontaneous synthesis that emerges when we truly listen to one another. Sure, you can try to control a conversation and steer it towards a specific outcome. You can make rigid plans and close yourself off and be all transactional about it. That’s how most of us were conditioned to approach creative work. But usually that approach drains the life out of you, the work itself, and whoever happens to consume it.

When we step into the conversational paradigm, our job is no longer to be an Expert, monologuing in a way that conveys our Unimpeachable Authority. It's not to Create Content that competes for mindshare in the attention marketplace. Our job is to notice what stirs our spirit a little bit, piques our curiosity, and then breathe life into it through intimate dialogue. Our practice is speaking what’s true or interesting or scary, however imperfectly, then listening for what comes back. Notice what this new information arouses, and then speak the truth again. Repeat. My hunch is this is how we reclaim our humanity in the age of machines. Not through exerting ever more white-knuckled control, but by surrendering to the natural flow of conversation.

Conversation is the atomic, indivisible unit of relationship, and relationship is the balm that begins to heal the wounds wrought by our incessant drive to control everything. Conversational creativity, therefore, is as much a tool for dissolving blocks and doing meaningful work as it is a philosophy for living in more harmonious relationship with life itself.

As you can probably tell, there’s a seed of an idea here. A big one. But it is anything but fleshed out. Definitely not ready for primetime yet.

So this week, I am going to follow my framework. I will excavate raw material from the old story of creativity, the new story, and build a bridge between them. And finally, I will fit these puzzle pieces into the first draft of a manifesto that that I hope will not only resonate with others, but resonate so deeply in me that I’m continuously inspired to step into deeper conversation myself.

That’s why it’s taken so long to write this manifesto. The ideas have been there all along. But I haven’t been ready to embody them. I’ve been too scared. Too locked up. But the longer I do this work, the more I realize that waiting to feel ready is a trap. The moment you feel totally and completely ready to create something, is likely the same moment that the inspirational spark leaves you. It was never asking you to control it. It was inviting you into conversation.

And the truth is, I have no idea where this manifesto will end up. But I’m tired of not being in the conversation. It’s time to surrender to it and see where it all leads.

The best manifestos share a common energetic signature that makes them feel utterly and viscerally alive.

Compared to normal essays or “brand vision documents” or whatever, which try to convince you of something in logical fashion, a manifesto crackles with a sense of emotional vibrancy that transcends the actual words on the page. Upon reading such a document, you don’t just feel logically convinced. You feel intrigued and animated at the possibility carrying this energy forward into your own life.

After plenty of pondering—probably too much tbh—I’ve got a working model of what this energy is, and the three elements that make it such a distinctive emotional experience.

First, there’s the energy of the old story. It’s animated by a clear-eyed awareness of the injustice and suffering woven through the status quo. Old story energy is fire, anger, urgency, compassion. It’s what emerges when the veil is lifted on the inner workings of our disquiet, and you see what you’re fighting against. You’ve met the enemy, and are no longer willing to turn a blind eye to it.

The second energy is that of the new story. It’s animated by the human capacity to create, to dream, to believe what lays beyond the horizon is more beautiful than what lays behind us. It is the energy of possibility, hope, airiness, and faith. It's what emerges when we drop the protective shield of cynicism, allow our hearts to act as compass, and let our imaginations run free, like children. Where might we end up if we're courageous enough to follow those heartfelt directions? What kind of world might we build?

The old and new stories are diametrically opposing energies. Like yin and yang. You can get lost in them, swept up into their totality. Many manifestos—and humans, for that matter—end up consumed by one or the other as they grasp at certainty and control. Pulled completely into the old story, you become consumed by despair and bitterness and rage. You focus endlessly on what’s broken, and so end up manifesting more brokenness. If you’re fully captured by the new story, you live in the clouds, in a naive sort of escapism that distracts from the very real problems before you. Some might call it spiritual bypassing.

Bridge energy, therefore, is the capacity to hold the old and new stories simultaneously, then choosing to dance between them in the present moment. Bridge energy is pragmatic, grounded, earthy, gracious. It's a sense of responsibility. When we embody bridge energy, we acknowledge that every breath we take, every action, every word, is a chance to solidify an old story of life or affirm a new one. Perhaps the greatest power we hold as humans is the ability to choose the stories we live, and to break the ones no longer serving us. Step by imperfect step.

These are the three alchemical elements of manifesto energy. Old story, new story, bridge. Fiery, hopeful, grounded. The process of writing a manifesto helps you cultivate and balance these energies within yourself. Reveling in the dynamic tensions between them provides fuel not just for creative work, but for bringing a more beautiful story of life to fruition.

Anyhow, this first episode is about one of my favorite books, John Gardner’s Self-Renewal, which I picked up after wouldn’t stop raving about it. This lil book gets at the heart of why I love manifestos so much, and why I see them as an essential tool for breaking from the stagnant, rigid energy that pervades so much of modern life.

Also my cat makes several appearances in this one. He was a feisty boy this morning.

P.S. This podcast format is inspired by ’s new show where she records impromptu voice notes about what’s going on with Sublime. The first few episodes have been great, and you should listen to them right after listening to mine.

Sup friends.

Just a heads up that I'll be using this Substack to publish a lot of new stuff about manifestos in the coming months. Like, A LOT of new stuff.

There will be riffs, rambles, solo podcasts, essays, conversations, etc. It’ll probably feel a bit relentless and overbearing if you have no interest in watching me unspool my Grand Unified Theory of Manifestos in real time.

That's why I've split this Substack into two lists. If you want to opt out of the Manifesto Mayhem but still receive Regular Rob Reports, you can unsubscribe from the former below.

However, if you’re a fan of my old writing on marketing, creativity, and self-renewal, then I think you will dig this new era. It's the synthesis of everything I've already done, while taking it all into wilder, more esoteric territory. Shit’s gonna get weird.

So yeah, that's all for today. Just wanted to offer a tsunami warning before your inbox floods. Rob's Manifesto Musings are coming soon to an internet device near you. Please unsubscribe if this does not interest you.

Catch ya later.

When I hear the word manifesto, I imagine an epic piece of writing that codifies a new worldview, culture, or system of thought. Something grand and totalizing. Something seismic that shakes your entire being down to the core.

Don't get me wrong, I freaking love those types of manifestos. But part of what I want to explore with this newsletter is how the manifesto genre can be functional. I'm curious about how manifestos can move individuals and institutions forward in meaningfully concrete ways.

And for that, thinking of manifestos as inherently big, dramatic, and all-encompassing will likely get in the way. There's a risk of trying to write one giant piece that encapsulates everything you are and want to be, then subsequently getting stuck in the mud for months or years. For the last two years I've been trying to write my magnum opus manifesto about what the word "Ungated" has come to mean for me, and let's just say it has not been going well (understatement). We're all multifaceted, ever-evolving beings, and if you're anything like me, attempting to define yourself in one fell swoop is going to feel like trying to nail jello to the wall.

So I'd like to propose the concept of mini manifestos. These are evocative pieces of writing that address one narrow slice of your life, or one element of your organization, where you'd like to stage a revolution. Doesn't even have to be a major revolution, either. Could be a tiny one.

You could write a mini manifesto about your work life. Your health. Your creative work. Your spirituality. Your relationships. Or you could get even more granular. A manifesto for how to be the product marketing manager you want to be. A manifesto about going for more walks and being present to all of the cute dogs and pretty flowers you encounter. A manifesto about eating more salads and enjoying the heck out of them.

Same line of thinking applies to organizations. Sure, you could write a manifesto that defines an entire startup and acts as its north star. But you could also have a manifesto just for the customer service reps, or UX designers, or engineering team. You could have a manifesto about a practice everyone else in your industry does to chase short-term growth, but you refuse to do at your company because you're focused on long-term games and relationships. Lots of possibilities here.

As for me personally, I'm in the brainstorming and outlining phase for these mini manifestos, each of which address some area of my life that I'm actively working on:

• The perfectionist's manifesto, in which I codify how I want to relate to my deep seated perfectionist tendencies, and reframe them as a gift instead of a curse.

• The loverboi manifesto, in which I declare how I want to show up in romance and partnership.

• The conversational creativity manifesto, in which I shift my framing of creative work away from Expert With Answers™ towards "regular guy who's in conversation with the worlds around and within him."

• The vitality manifesto, in which I move away from a punishment/discipline model of nutrition and fitness, towards one in which feeling fucking amazing in my body is the chief aim.

• Rob's money manifesto, in which I unfuck my relationship with making and spending money by addressing underlying issues of shame.

Your mileage may vary, but I'm finding that writing manifestos for individual aspects of my life feels super empowering. It takes some of the pressure off to Figure My Shit Out at a high level, and instead focus on how I want to show up in these localized areas. And by focusing more specifically, it helps me be more concrete, more direct, and more clear when I'm in integrity with my stated aims or not. Specificity is its own form of power, I'm learning.

So yeah, that's the question I'd leave you with today.

What's one area of your life or business where the conditions are ripe for revolution? An area that would yield disproportionate reward if you clarified the future you desire, and how you'd have to show up to create that future?

P.S. I'm kinda proud of myself for not using the word "minifesto" in this post. Please clap.

Hi, my name is Rob, and I am obsessed with manifestos. Reading em, writing em, thinking all day about them. Can’t get enough tbh.

Here’s my thesis on why this genre feels so alluring and alive for me, and why I’m keen to keep exploring it.

Writing a manifesto for yourself, your community, or your startup can set in motion a chain of events that transforms your inner and outer worlds in powerful, often unexpected ways. In other words, manifesto writing is a bit like casting a magic spell. Approached with intention and heart—and yes, a bit of faith—a manifesto can open the door to new possibilities that wouldn't otherwise exist. It sounds a tad hyperbolic, perhaps. But I've experienced it myself enough times to know the magic firsthand. There's untapped alpha in manifestos for those who take the form seriously.

The process of writing a manifesto, at its core, is the process of clarifying your desire. In a world that's constantly distracting us with digital noise and shiny objects, keeping us running on a mimetic treadmill of manufactured desires, getting clear about what you want, deep down, is a radical act. Exploring and articulating what matters most, then committing it to writing, is a bit like waking up to your own humanity after a deep slumber. It kicks off a journey of coming home to yourself.

Writing a manifesto isn't just about desire and vision, though. The process invites you to explore who you must become, what principles you must embody, and how you must act in order for your desires to come to fruition. It brings you face to face with your shadow, and forces you to reckon with the reality of where you are today. To sit with the status quo. To diagnose why things feel so distressing. One of the most impactful things you can do in a manifesto is to articulate a problem so vividly that its solutions become self-evident, both for yourself and readers. That, in its own way, is a form of magic.

The final step, and the most alchemically consequential, is the publishing of your manifesto. Birthing it into the world. Injecting it into the slipstream of the internet. When you share your manifesto, it acts as a magnet. It pulls people towards you, helping you find the others, attract new allies and opportunities, and open yourself to untold future serendipities. But more importantly, publishing your manifesto magnetizes you towards your own ambitions. It raises the stakes of your life, thus increasing the likelihood that these words will not be empty. No. When you hit publish, you are far more likely to strive valiantly towards your deepest desires, and live in accord with the values you committed to the page.

The process of earnest striving, and living in integrity with your words, only feeds the fire, and attracts ever more people and opportunities into your world. Writing and publishing a manifesto begins a virtuous cycle where you accelerate the process of becoming who you want to be. And I believe this is true for individuals, communities, startups, movements, or anyone with deep ambition to create a more beautiful, transcendent experience of life.

In the coming months, I'll be sharing my own experiences with manifestos, as I've been writing them in one form or another since 2015. This practice has shaped my life in so many unexpected ways, and continues to lead me in magical new directions. I'll also be dissecting and studying the manifestos I most admire—from individuals, artistic and political movements, and companies—to weave a deeper understanding of this craft.

Lastly, I'll be using this space to document case studies of new manifestos I write for myself, for startup clients, and people I work with as a writing coach. It's funny, this thread of focusing on manifestos feels fresh and fun, while also being the synthesis of so much of the marketing/creator work I've done over the years. It's like all of the threads of my professional life are coming together all at once, and I can't wait to explore with y'all.