Author: Jeffrey McMahon

The FOMO Frequency: How I Tried to Tune Back into Real Life

As I clawed my way out of my addiction to writing doomed novels (which were really short stories in disguise), a strange thing happened: buried emotions clawed back. It wasn’t pleasant. It was like peeling off a bandage only to discover that underneath was raw, exposed nerve endings. Turns out, the grandiose fever dream of writing had insulated me from reality. Now, stripped of that delusion, I was left unprotected, vulnerable, and completely awake to the world.

And the world, in 2025, was on fire.

Literally. The Los Angeles wildfires turned the sky into an apocalyptic hellscape—a choking haze of smoke and fury. The inferno forced me into an act I hadn’t performed in years: I dusted off a radio and tuned into live news.

That’s when I had two epiphanies.

First, I realized I despise my streaming devices. Their algorithm-fed content is an endless conveyor belt of lukewarm leftovers, a numbing backdrop of curated noise that feels canned, impersonal, and utterly devoid of gezelligheid, a sense of shared enjoyment. Worst of all, streaming had turned me into a passive listener, a zombie locked inside a walled garden of predictability. I spent my days warning my college students about AI flattening human expression, yet here I was, letting an algorithm flatten my own relationship with music.

But the moment I switched on the radio, its warmth hit me like an old friend I hadn’t seen in decades. A visceral ache spread through my chest as memories of radio’s golden spell came rushing back—memories of being nine years old, crawling into bed after watching Julia and The Flying Nun, slipping an earbud into my transistor radio, and being transported to another world.

Tuned to KFRC 610 AM, I was no longer just a kid in the suburbs—I was part of something bigger. The shimmering sounds of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime” or Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion” weren’t just songs; they were shared experiences. Thousands of others were listening at that same moment, swaying to the same rhythms, caught in the same invisible current of sound.

And then I realized—that connection was gone.

The wildfires didn’t just incinerate acres of land; they exposed the gaping fault lines in my craving for something real. Nostalgia hit like a sucker punch, and before I knew it, I was tumbling down an online rabbit hole, obsessively researching high-performance radios, convinced that the right one could resurrect the magic of my youth.

But was this really about better reception?

Or was it just another pathetic attempt to outrun mortality?

Streaming didn’t just change my relationship with music; it hollowed it out.

I had been living in a frictionless digital utopia, where effort was obsolete and everything was available on demand—and I was miserable. Streaming devices optimized convenience at the cost of discovery, flattening music into algorithmic predictability, stripping it of its spontaneity, and reducing me to a passive consumer scrolling through pre-packaged soundscapes.

It was ironic. I had let technology lull me into the very state of mediocrity I warned my students about.

Kyle Chayka’s Flatworld spells out the horror in precise terms: when you optimize everything, you kill everything that makes life rich and rewarding. Just as Ozempic flattens hunger, technology flattens culture into a pre-digested slurry of lifeless efficiency.

I didn’t need Flatworld to tell me this. I had lived it.

The day I flipped on a real radio again, I didn’t just hear a broadcast—I heard my brain rebooting. The warmth, the spontaneity, the realness of people talking in real time—it was the sonic equivalent of quitting Soylent and biting into a perfectly seared ribeye.

If Flatworld taught me anything, it’s that aliveness is exactly what convenience culture is designed to eradicate.

Once I abandoned streaming, I filled every room in my house with a high-performance multiband radio. My love of music returned. A strange peace settled over me.

The problem? My addictive personality latched onto radios with a zeal that bordered on the irrational.

I began gazing at them with the kind of reverence normally reserved for religious icons. When I spotted a Tecsun PL-990, PL-880, PL-680, or PL-660, something in my brain short-circuited. I was instantly enchanted, as if I had just glimpsed an old friend across a crowded room. At the same time, I was comforted, as if that friend had handed me a warm cup of coffee and told me everything was going to be alright.

But a radio isn’t just a device. It’s a symbol, though I’m still working out of what exactly.

Maybe it represents the lost art of slowing down—of sitting in a quiet room, wrapped in a cocoon of music or familiar voices. Or maybe it’s something deeper, a sanctuary against the relentless noise of modern life, a frequency through which I can tune out the profane and tune into something sacred.

The word that comes to mind when I hold a radio is cozy—but not in the scented-candle, novelty-mug kind of way. This is something deeper, something akin to the Dutch word gezelligheid—a feeling of warmth, belonging, and ineffable connection to the present moment.

Radios don’t just play sound; they create atmosphere. They transport me back to Hollywood, Florida, sitting on the porch with my grandfather, the air thick with the scent of an impending tropical storm, the crackle of a ball game playing in the background like the heartbeat of another era.

That’s the thing about gezelligheid—it isn’t something you can program into an algorithm. It isn’t something you can optimize. It’s a byproduct of presence, community, and shared experience—the very things convenience culture erodes.

Many have abandoned radio for the cold efficiency of streaming and smartphones.

I tried to do the same for over a decade.

I failed.

Because some things, no matter how old-fashioned, still hum with life.

And maybe that’s what replacing streaming devices with radios is about—not just recovering from my addiction to writing abysmal novels, but recovering life itself from the grip of Flatworld.

March 19, 2025
FOMO and the Parable of the Wedding Feast

Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Feast is basically FOMO cranked up to full volume—the kind that doesn’t just leave you with mild regret but thrusts you into existential despair and gnashing of teeth.

The story goes like this: A king throws the wedding of the century, an all-expenses-paid extravaganza, and sends out invites. But the original VIP guests ghost him, offering lame excuses like tending to their farm or handling business deals—modern equivalent: “Sorry, can’t make it, I have a dentist appointment.”

Furious, the king opens the party to literally everyone, filling the banquet hall with randos off the street. So far, so good—except one poor guy shows up without wedding attire and gets unceremoniously bound hand and foot and tossed into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The lesson? Rejecting a golden opportunity is bad, but showing up unprepared is even worse. This is FOMO at its most terrifying—the doors close, the feast begins, and you’re either locked out forever or dragged into the abyss for showing up without a tux. Moral of the story: Don’t blow off divine invitations, and for heaven’s sake, dress appropriately.

March 19, 2025
FOMO and Lot’s Wife
Lot’s wife was the Patron Saint of People Who Can’t Move On. Fixated on the past, she suffered one of the most poetically savage fates in the Bible—all because she couldn’t resist one last look.

Here’s the setup:

God, having had enough of Sodom and Gomorrah’s apocalyptic-level depravity, decided to do a little urban renewal via fire and brimstone. Before flattening the twin cities of sin, He sent two angels to warn Lot—one of the few decent guys left—to grab his family and run for the hills.

The angels gave one very clear, non-negotiable instruction:

“Run for your lives. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.”

Lot, his wife, and their daughters bolted. But somewhere along the escape route, Lot’s wife just had to turn around—whether out of nostalgia, defiance, or sheer, irresistible FOMO.

And in that instant, she was turned into a human salt lick.

No warning. No second chances. Just instantaneous, irreversible transformation into a monument of bad decision-making.

The Bible doesn’t spell out exactly why she got the sodium chloride special, but theories abound:
1. FOMO: The Most Fatal Flavor – Maybe she wasn’t just looking back—maybe she was longing for what she was leaving behind. If she couldn’t let go of the past, she was doomed to be frozen in it.
2. Disobedience Gets You Petrified – The angels didn’t offer wiggle room in their warning. No fine print. No loopholes. She broke the one rule, and divine judgment hit like a lightning bolt wrapped in a salt shaker.
3. The Ultimate Symbol of Being Stuck – Salt, in biblical times, was a symbol of barrenness and desolation. Her punishment could represent what happens when you refuse to move forward—you end up a relic, a cautionary tale, a roadside curiosity for future travelers.
Whether she was mourning her house, her friends, or the top-tier Sodom brunch scene, Lot’s wife represents everyone who has ever been emotionally imprisoned by the past.

I get it.

As a former bodybuilder and Boomer who cut his teeth in the 70s, I have spent more time than I care to admit wallowing in the golden glow of a decade I will never return to. I see the world through a haze of disco ball reflections, Angel Flight bell-bottoms, puka shells, coconut-scented tanning oil, and Love Boat reruns.

Nostalgia is a drug. It arrests us emotionally, tricks us into believing that the best version of ourselves already happened, and feeds us visions of glory we probably never even had.

Lot’s wife? She’s the ultimate warning against romanticizing the past. She didn’t just look back—she got stuck there.

And if we’re not careful, we’ll be right there with her, frozen in time, while the world moves on without us.
March 19, 2025
FOMO in the Garden of Eden

Surely, God understands human psychology better than we do. So when He decreed to Adam and Eve that they could indulge in every luscious, dripping fruit in the Garden except for one—the forbidden, gleaming red apple—He must have known exactly what He was doing.

Let’s be honest: this was textbook reverse psychology.

If you tell a human—especially a child—that they can have anything they want except for one thing, their entire brain will now orbit around that one thing. They won’t just want it; they will ache for it. The denial itself transforms it from an ordinary apple into an object of unbearable, cosmic significance.

And yet, we’re supposed to believe that it was the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve? Please.

The real agent of temptation wasn’t some fork-tongued reptile whispering sweet nothings about omniscience—it was the restriction itself. God set the stage for FOMO, lit the match, and then acted surprised when the fire caught.

By banning the apple, He turned it into the first status symbol in human history. Before that, it was just another piece of produce. Now, it was the One Fruit to Rule Them All. The ultimate off-limits delicacy, the Birkin bag of Eden, a thing so exclusive, so unattainable, that they couldn’t stop obsessing over it.

So what does that say about God?

It suggests that the God of Genesis is the original architect of FOMO—implanting the desire, priming the temptation, and then punishing humanity for falling into the very trap He designed.

Divine irony at its finest.

March 19, 2025
The First Cut is the Deepest: A Childhood Steeped in FOMO

FOMO is never stronger than in childhood, when imagination stretches farther than reality can reach and the world feels just beyond our grasp. To a child, magic is real, enchantment is tangible, and some hidden paradise always seems just out of reach—close enough to see, impossible to touch. And nothing stings quite like realizing that somewhere, right now, a better world exists, and you are not in it.

I learned this lesson in the summer of 1968 in San Jose, California, while riding bikes with my neighbor, Billy Cantambay. We were two six-year-olds, circling Venado Court as a fine mist of summer rain fell around us, making the streetlights glow and the air smell like wet pavement and possibility.

Then we saw it:

A single blue light flickering in the distance, hovering above the unfinished housing developments at the edge of the neighborhood. It twinkled through the fog like a Christmas bulb detached from time, a spectral glow that neither of us could explain.

“Christmas lights!” one of us shouted.

“Christmas lights!” the other echoed.

But why was Christmas happening over there and not here? Whose house was that? What kind of people lived beneath that glow? In my mind, I pictured a lone man inside—not lonely, just content—waking up to Christmas every day.

For a week, Billy and I worshipped the light, riding our bikes in endless circles, pointing, speculating, longing. Then one evening, it was gone. No explanation. No goodbye. Just a vanishing act, leaving behind nothing but an ache—an inexplicable sadness, as if we had been denied entry into something greater than ourselves.

Four years later, another dream slipped through my fingers, and this time, I cried about it.

My fifth-grade friend Marc Warren had invited me to Piper’s Smorgasbord in San Leandro, California—a kingdom of pizza, fried chicken, and blueberry pie, where gluttony was not just encouraged but a sacred ritual. By the time we left, we were bloated with triumph.

Driving home, still drunk on sugar and grease, we talked about our flying dreams.

Not figurative flying—not ambition, not success—actual flying. The kind where you jump off a cliff and just go, gliding over the ocean, effortless, weightless, free.

The dreams were so vivid—we could remember the wind in our faces, the rush of air under our arms, the certainty that we would never fall.

And then, reality crashed down.

We weren’t flying. We would never fly.

The grief was immediate, existential, crushing.

Two fifth-graders, staring out the car window, weeping over the cosmic injustice of gravity.

That’s the cruelty of FOMO—it isn’t just about missing an event. It’s about missing a world, a place so real inside your imagination that its absence hurts like a phantom limb.

Every culture has its own version of this unreachable paradise—a place forever close but forever out of reach.

For me, it was Bali Ha’i.

The song, sung so hauntingly by Juanita Hall in South Pacific, tells of an island just across the water—visible, tantalizing, but never quite attainable.

I first heard it as a toddler in the Flavet Villages—a cluster of old military barracks repurposed as student housing in Gainesville, Florida, where my family lived near an alligator swamp and a stretch of forest.

Most people would have found the place bleak. I found it enchanted.

At dusk, my father and I would walk to the edge of the forest to visit a Mynah bird, which perched on the same branch every evening, watching us with an intelligence I couldn’t explain.

The swamp smelled of alligator dung, a rank, pungent stench that somehow filled me with a sense of cosmic belonging.

One night, as we stood beneath the Mynah bird, a distant radio played “Bali Ha’i.”

The melody wove itself into the moment, perfectly harmonizing with the humid night air, the bird’s quiet watchfulness, and the unseen creatures shifting in the darkness.

For the first time, I understood the ache of paradise lost.

In 1965, another world out of reach found me.

Her name was Barbara Eden.

She lived inside a genie bottle—a glowing jewel of a home, lined with pink and purple satin, circular sofas, and mother-of-pearl inlays.

To five-year-old me, this was the peak of human civilization.

I didn’t just want to watch I Dream of Jeannie. I wanted to live inside that bottle.

I imagined myself curled up on the velvet cushions, bathed in the warm glow of genie magic, whispering secrets with Jeannie as the outside world became irrelevant.

When it hit me—really hit me—that I would never live in that bottle, that the closest I’d ever get was a TV screen and my own relentless imagination, I felt crushed in a way I had no words for.

Even crueler?

That gorgeous genie home was just a painted Jim Beam whiskey decanter.

That’s what FOMO really is: intoxication by illusion.

And long before Instagram, long before airbrushed vacations and curated feeds, I was already intimately familiar with its sting.

March 19, 2025
FOMO: A Condition as Old as Childhood Tantrums

Much has been made of FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—in the social media age, where we subject ourselves to an endless scroll of curated perfection, exotic vacations, and influencer brunches that remind us, yet again, that our lives are decidedly less fabulous. We are told, repeatedly, that comparison is the mother of misery, and we learn this lesson the hard way every time we doomscroll our way into existential despair.

The connection between FOMO and social media is so well-documented that many assume it’s a modern affliction, a byproduct of algorithms and influencer culture. But this is nonsense. FOMO is primal. FOMO is childhood itself.

It’s the feverish, anxiety-ridden anticipation that every child feels when something exciting is on the horizon—an internal combustion engine of eagerness, panic, and irrational urgency.

I got my first brutal taste of FOMO-induced devastation in 1967, when my parents took me to Disneyland on Free Hat Day. In my young mind, this wasn’t just an outing—it was destiny. But instead of racing out the door at dawn, my parents had the audacity to languish over bacon and eggs while I vibrated with dread. By the time we arrived, the Mickey Mouse hats were long gone—claimed by early-rising, better-prepared children whose parents actually understood the stakes of childhood desire.

And what did I get?

A Donald Duck cap. A second-place trophy in the hierarchy of Disney headwear. It was my first true heartbreak, a cruel reminder that hesitation and breakfast foods could cost you everything.

The beach was another FOMO battleground.

As our car inched closer to the ocean, I could smell the saltwater, hear the cacophony of seagulls, and catch a tantalizing sliver of the horizon—and with each sensory cue, my stomach flipped with impatience.

To my young mind, we weren’t just going to the beach—we were competing for a piece of it, and if my parents didn’t park immediately, we would lose our rightful claim to the best stretch of sand. I imagined other families staking their umbrellas, digging their trenches, laying territorial claim while we circled endlessly in a parking lot purgatory.

Of course, there was always plenty of beach, and we always found a spot, but that’s the nature of FOMO—it turns everything into a high-stakes competition in which the difference between bliss and utter catastrophe comes down to how fast you can get there.

FOMO isn’t new. It’s the original childhood affliction, the gnawing anxiety that life’s best moments are happening somewhere else—and you’re missing them because your parents won’t hurry the hell up.

March 19, 2025
Magical Thinking #7: The Laws of Time Don’t Apply to Me
(or, The Fool’s Gamble Against Father Time)

There’s a special kind of delusion that whispers in our ears: You’re different. You’re special. The rules don’t apply to you. Other people? Sure, they age, they lose opportunities, they watch time slip through their fingers. But you—you will defy time. You will live in a perpetual Now, a beautiful, untouchable bubble where youth, dreams, and endless possibility never fade.

Phil Stutz has a name for the figure who shatters this illusion: Father Time—that grizzled old man with the hourglass, reminding us that our only real power lies in discipline, structure, and engagement with reality. Ignore him at your peril, because his wrath is merciless. Just ask Dexter Green, the tragic dreamer of Winter Dreams, who spends his life avoiding reality, chasing pleasure, and worshiping an illusion named Judy Jones.

Dexter believes he can live outside the real world, feeding off the fantasy of Judy rather than engaging with anything substantial. And for a while, this works. But Father Time is patient, and when Dexter finally wakes up, it’s too late.

Time Will Have Its Revenge

At thirty-two, long past his days of chasing the unattainable Judy, Dexter sits in a business meeting with a man named Devlin—a conversation that will destroy his last illusions.

Devlin delivers the blow: Judy is married now. Her name is Judy Simms, and her once dazzling, untouchable existence has collapsed into something horrifyingly mundane. Her husband is a drunk, an abuser, a tyrant. She is trapped in a miserable marriage to a man who beats her, then gets forgiven every time.

The once invincible, radiant Judy Jones, breaker of hearts, goddess of his dreams, is now an exhausted, aging housewife living under the rule of a man who treats her like dirt.

And just like that, Dexter’s winter dream crumbles into dust.

The Ultimate Betrayal: Time Wins, Beauty Fades, Illusions Die

The final insult comes when Devlin, with casual indifference, describes Judy as not all that special anymore—her once-mesmerizing beauty faded, her magic gone.

“She was a pretty girl when she first came to Detroit,” he says, as if commenting on an old piece of furniture.

For Dexter, this is not just a shock—it is the ultimate existential gut-punch.

For two decades, he has nourished his soul on the fantasy of Judy Jones, believing that she was something otherworldly, untouchable, worth sacrificing real life for. Now, in a single afternoon, he learns she was never a goddess, never unique, never even particularly remarkable.

Imagine having a high school crush, the Homecoming Queen, frozen in your memory as perfection itself. Then one day, you look her up on Facebook and she looks like Meat Loaf. That’s Dexter’s moment of reckoning.

His fantasy was never real. His youth is gone. His life has been wasted chasing an illusion. And now, standing in the wreckage, he feels the full force of Father Time’s judgment.

The “Butt on a Stick” Moment

In America, we have a phrase for the soul-crushing moment when reality smacks you so hard you can’t even breathe:

“Your butt has been handed to you on a stick.”

Dexter’s life has collapsed in on itself, and his first instinct is the same as anyone caught in the throes of devastation: This shouldn’t be happening to me.

But as Phil Stutz warns, that thought is pure insanity.

It is happening. It already happened. The more you protest, the more stuck you become. Stutz calls this victim mentality, the psychological quicksand that keeps people from ever moving forward. Dexter has two choices:
1. Wallow in his misery, trapped in the wreckage of his illusions.
2. Learn from his suffering and use it as a tool for transformation.
Breaking Free from the Winter Dream

And here’s where things get interesting: now that Dexter’s fantasy has been obliterated, he is free.

Yes, the truth is bitter. Yes, he wasted years chasing a ghost. But he is no longer chained to the illusion. The question now is: What does he do with that freedom?

Does he just find another “winter dream” to chase, another illusion to waste his life on? Or does he finally grow up and engage with reality?

What Would Phil Stutz Tell Dexter?

Stutz, co-author of The Tools, has a philosophy: Pain is a tool, not a punishment.

Most people, like Dexter, already know their problems. They just don’t know how to stop repeating them.
- Dexter knows he was obsessed with Judy Jones.
- Watch collectors know they keep rebuying the same watches they swore they’d never buy again.
- Food addicts know they shouldn’t be devouring that entire pizza at 11 p.m.
But knowing isn’t enough. You need tools to fight your worst instincts.

The Tools: How to Stop Wasting Your Life

Stutz realized that traditional therapy was useless—all it did was force people to dig deeper into their childhood wounds without ever giving them real solutions.

So he created The Tools—specific actions that force people to break free from their psychological traps.

Stutz doesn’t waste time on introspection without action. He knows that change happens when you move, engage, and disrupt your patterns.
- Stop trying to “think” your way out of your misery. Take action.
- Stop believing your problems are unique. They aren’t.
- Stop assuming time will wait for you. It won’t.
Part X: The Enemy Inside Your Head

The biggest enemy to change is what Stutz calls Part X—the part of you that wants to stay stuck, wants to keep wallowing in old habits, wants to keep clinging to comforting fantasies instead of engaging with reality.

And if you don’t fight Part X, you’ll waste your life exactly like Dexter did.

Final Lesson: Get Out of the Maze

If Dexter keeps fixating on his past, he will stay lost in the Maze—that endless loop of regret, nostalgia, and what-ifs that locks people in place while the world moves on without them.

If he accepts reality, uses his pain as a tool, and engages with life, then he has a chance at something real.

Because here’s the truth:

Father Time will take everything from you—except the lessons you learn and the actions you take.

Use them, or lose everything.
March 19, 2025
Magical Thinking #6: The Delusion of Spectacular Victimhood

(or, Why Some People Think Suffering Makes Them Superior)

Some people wear their victimhood like a crown, believing their suffering elevates them above mere mortals. In their minds, they aren’t just unlucky—they are too special for the ordinary rules of life to apply. While the rest of the world trudges along, accepting the brutal facts of existence (life is finite, love is messy, and rejection is part of the deal), they remain frozen in their own tragic grandeur, convinced their suffering makes them exceptional.

Enter Dexter Green, the self-pitying protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “Winter Dreams,” who refuses to move forward because his longing for Judy Jones is just too profound, too sacred, too cosmic. He isn’t just some guy—he is a tormented artist of heartbreak, a misunderstood genius of unfulfilled desire.

Of course, in reality, he’s just a narcissist trapped in a time warp of his own making. His delusion? That his suffering is so grand, his craving so exquisite, that he is somehow above the pedestrian business of healing and moving on.

Dexter isn’t merely sad—he is bitter, self-indulgent, and wholly consumed by his own perceived tragedy. He wallows in his loss, believing it sets him apart from the dull masses who go on to live their lives, find new love, and accept the passage of time.

And what exactly is the great, defining tragedy that makes Dexter a card-carrying member of the Victim Elite?

He will always love Judy Jones, yet he can never have her.

That’s it. That’s the whole catastrophe.

Not war, not famine, not betrayal—just the fact that the universe won’t bend to his will and deliver him a dream woman who never actually existed.

His suffering isn’t noble. It isn’t romantic. It’s a self-inflicted prison, built from narcissism and self-pity. And like all magical thinkers, Dexter is convinced he is too special to follow the laws that govern everyone else. He should be able to have what he wants. He should be able to break the rules of time, fate, and human nature.

But life doesn’t work that way. And no amount of self-mythologizing will change that.

March 19, 2025
Magical Thinking #5: The Delusional Art of Repeating the Same Disaster and Expecting a Miracle

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, then we are all a little insane—especially when it comes to our worst habits, our most toxic relationships, and our dumbest obsessions.

Take the vampire relationship—a toxic, soul-sucking romance that drains you dry every time, yet you keep crawling back, convinced that this time it will be different. It never is. The fangs sink in, the life force drains out, and you’re left staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m., wondering how you let yourself get bit again.

And if love isn’t your particular poison, maybe watch collecting is.

Watch guys (myself included) have perfected a very specific brand of lunacy—thinking that selling a watch will cure our addiction. We convince ourselves: If I sell this, I’ll be free. This is the last one. I’m done. But before the ink on the eBay transaction dries, we’re rebuying it. And then reselling it. And then rebuying it again. It’s a closed-loop system of self-inflicted torment, a never-ending maze of false hope and regret.

Dude. You need help. Read Phil Stutz, escape the Maze, and put your life in Forward Motion before your retirement fund turns into a pile of resale receipts and buyer’s remorse.

If you think this brand of self-destruction through repetition is new, think again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald saw it decades ago in Winter Dreams, where Dexter Green is hopelessly addicted to the walking emotional Ponzi scheme that is Judy Jones. She is his drug, his illusion, his vampire. She is untrustworthy, indifferent, and incapable of meaning what she says, yet he keeps coming back for more.

Dexter isn’t just in love with Judy Jones—he’s in love with the idea of her, the fantasy that someday she’ll become what he wants her to be. She won’t. And as he wastes years orbiting her gravitational pull of destruction, real life passes him by. By the time he wakes up from the dream, it’s too late.

Sound familiar? It should.

Because whether it’s a vampire relationship, a doomed watch-buying cycle, or a delusional romance straight out of Fitzgerald’s nightmares, the result is always the same: life keeps moving forward while we stay stuck, trapped in our own bad decisions.

March 19, 2025
Magical Thinking #4: The Power Play Illusion

(or, Why Rolex is Schmolex and Your Favorite Song is Dead to You)

People like to believe that power equals happiness—that if they can flex on the world just right, contentment will follow. It won’t. But that doesn’t stop the endless parade of obnoxious power plays designed to manufacture status while delivering absolutely zero fulfillment.

If you want an easy lesson in the folly of power, read a children’s book. Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss perfectly illustrates the doomed nature of power-lust. Yertle stacks himself on the backs of his fellow turtles, ruling over them like a tyrant—until, inevitably, the whole thing collapses and he ends up in the mud, humiliated. A perfect metaphor for the desperate, self-defeating nature of most power grabs.

Power Play #1: Making People Wait

One of the most tired power moves in the corporate playbook is the boss who makes his subordinates stand around like idiots while he does something “important.” Maybe he’s chomping on a sandwich, lazily swinging a golf club in his office, or pretending to be locked in a deep, world-changing phone call. The message is clear: I am in control. You exist on my schedule.

In reality, this is a power move straight from the middle manager’s guide to overcompensation—the business-world equivalent of a small dog barking furiously through a fence.

Power Play #2: Restaurant Tyrants

Some people have so little actual power in their lives that the only place they can lord over others is at a restaurant. Watch for the guy berating the waitstaff over a slightly overcooked steak or treating the hostess like she’s beneath him. This is not a powerful person—this is a loser grasping at the flimsiest form of authority available.

Power Play #3: Dating as a Status Grab

Some high school guys don’t date because they like a girl. They date because other guys like her, and taking her is a flex. She’s not a person to them—she’s a trophy, a territory to be claimed, a game to be won. This is not love, nor attraction—it’s status theater, and it’s as empty as it is pathetic.

Power Play #4: Buying Rolex for the Wrong Reasons

Which brings me to the ultimate power flex of consumer culture: Rolex.

I love Rolex. The Explorer II is a masterpiece. But would I buy one? No. Not even if money were no object. Because Rolex is no longer Rolex—it’s Schmolex.

The Transmutational Phenomenon: When Prestige Gets Laundered into Meaninglessness

Rolex suffers from what I call The Transmutational Phenomenon—a process where something once beautiful and meaningful is absorbed into the commercial bloodstream and spit back out as a status symbol for the masses.

Rolex, originally a marvel of craftsmanship, is now the go-to wrist flex for people who don’t actually care about watches. It has been worn by too many hedge-fund bros, crypto grifters, and status-hungry clout chasers who want the shiny aura of power but lack the appreciation for the artistry. After decades in the cosmic wash cycle of commercial culture, Rolex emerges from the machine unrecognizable to its former self. It’s no longer Rolex. It’s Schmolex.

How Commercial Culture Murders Meaning

This transmutational process happens all the time. Take music.

I once loved Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Then, in my teenage years, Circuit City, a now-defunct stereo store chain in the Bay Area, blasted a snippet of it in every single radio and TV ad. Slowly, insidiously, the song transformed. It was no longer “Dark Side of the Moon.” It was “Flark Flide of the Gloom.” The song I once revered no longer existed.

This is what happened to Rolex. Maybe it’s not the brand’s fault, but the fact remains: Rolex isn’t Rolex anymore. It’s Schmolex.

The Lesson? Power is an Empty Currency

Whether it’s making people wait, bossing around waiters, dating for status, or flexing a Rolex for the Instagram likes, none of it leads to actual happiness.

Because power isn’t joy, and status isn’t meaning. If you need an overpriced watch, an expensive steak, or a fragile ego-boost to feel powerful, you’re not powerful at all.

March 19, 2025