X

May 18, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

There’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for at least a week now. Each day a different topic popped up and convinced me to write about it that day instead. Today I have no such distraction, and yet I seem to be finding different excuses not to write. I’m starting this letter an hour or two later than normal, and I think it’s at least in part because I’m procrastinating. I didn’t think this was a topic I had resistance to exploring, but perhaps I do. Let’s flush it out and see what we find.

The topic at hand is social media, and in particular X. You are both well aware that I enjoy consuming content on X, and in fact you both enjoy consuming some of that content with me: I flag content I think you will enjoy for us to watch together later. When I’m not watching with you, I use X to learn about new topics, stay abreast of what is going on in the world (I use X to keep up with news and current events the way prior generations used newspapers and the televised nightly news), and connect with other fans of my favorite teams. What changed, recently, was that I decided to become not just a consumer of content, but a participant in the discussion.

I’ve long feared the potential ramifications of engaging online, and so I stayed on the sidelines. But…ah, okay, now I am beginning to notice the avoidance. I touched on some of this last week, but this deserves a slightly deeper dive. For awhile I’ve had ideas (dreams? ambitions? visions?) of being something of a content producer. Indeed, I make these letters public so that others might consume them and benefit. I’ve had other ideas: I’ve considered starting a podcast, of creating a group in addition to Spiritual Stew that gives me more of a platform to speak. Underpinning all of this is a general sense that I have something to offer, and that there will be an audience for what I have to say if and when I can find the right combination of media and voice. I’ve written about this before, but I had one vision where I was something of a revivalist minister. Ever since that vision I’ve held the sensation that it represented some version of my future.

So, why do I feel resistance? If these are all topics I’ve explored before in this space, why am I avoiding exploring those topics today? If I were attempting to summarize, past mentions of these topics put those concepts out in some future, sometimes even expressing frustration that I felt stuck and wanted to get unstuck. I suspect the difference between those notes and today is primarily that I these ideas suddenly feel upon me, without the distance I’ve felt before. For whatever reason, things are starting to feel real, and that’s a little scary.

How does this tie back to social media? Well, I’ve always assumed I would need a social media presence to get my ideas out into the world. I’d even spent some time thinking about how I would go about creating, crafting, and cultivating that presence. Each time I thought about it, I always assumed I’d create some anonymous identity whose sole purpose was creating awareness for my content. But that doesn’t make much sense: there’s virtually no way I’ll be able to keep my identity a secret and do what I feel called to do. Ugh.

For a long while I imagined creating this online persona, and what I might do with that persona. But the complexity of it all felt overwhelming, and so I never started. My breakthrough, to the extent I’ve had one, was giving up on the idea of creating a persona and just…engaging as me. Also, rather than using social media as a platform to get out a specific message or content, I’ve just engaged with topics that interest me. The overarching impact has been to remove mental barriers and expectations and just experimenting with putting stuff out there.

I’ve learned some stuff in the process. For one thing, I’m realizing I always assumed getting attention online was easy: just write an engaging tweet and it goes viral, right? Yeah, it’s not quite so easy. Some of my favorite posts have garnered no attention, which wounds my pride and feels isolating and lonely. This highlights a juxtaposition about social media: it can create an overwhelming amount of attention for certain people and topics, but it can also drown out almost all voices, such that most folks feel pretty unheard.

Engaging in others’ posts seems to be a more effective way of garnering awareness, at least so far. I suspect once one builds up enough of an “audience”, one can probably generate attention on one’s own posts. Until then, I might be better off participating in threads created by others. We’ll see: I’m experimenting, and I’m learning.

Which makes me realize: I wasn’t ready to create an online persona and get a message out. I needed to learn how to engage and participate and attract attention before I will be ready to use social media as a distribution platform. I need some practice, and so that’s what I am doing now.

But it’s not just about the practice. I’m not just engaging for the sake of creating a brand or distribution engine. I’m engaging in ways that feel genuine and authentic to me. For one thing, most of my engagement thus far has been related to my favorite sports teams. We’re in the NBA playoff, so a lot of my participation revolves around my beloved Spurs. Mostly I’ve celebrated wins with other Spurs fans, but I’ve also complimented Spurs’ opponents to their fans, and even (somewhat unintentionally) engaged in debates with other fanbases. My goal in all of these interaction has been to spread a little brightness and joy.

Interestingly, these efforts to spread light and joy seem to be working. Obviously celebrating wins with fellow fans is pretty easy, but other efforts seem to generate their own types of wins. I responded to a post from the Timberwolves team account in which they congratulated the Spurs on a series victory; I pointed out how much respect I had for their team, and how much I feared them because I respected them so much: that post generated more impressions (17k) and likes (0.4k) than anything else I’ve posted so far. In engaging with fans for other teams, I tried hard to give every response to my posts their most generous interpretations (not always completely successfully, I must admit). I worked hard to respond with kindness and empathy, even while setting some boundaries where appropriate. In a couple instances folks who I originally thought were “trolls” softened dramatically in their second responses once they realized I was being genuine and not intending to provoke them. These interactions reinforce something I’ve long suspected: something about the medium (and short form online communication in general) lends itself toward acrimony, and trains us all to believe the worst about each other. But, at least so far, I’m impressed how little effort one need apply to turning those assumptions around and replacing contentious interactions with meaningful, connecting interactions. Those feel like wins, even if small wins with small audiences.

Unrelated to the Spurs, I found myself engaged in an interesting and thoughtful debate on energy policy; I advocated for pursuing a broad array of solutions while an interlocutor advocated for minimizing pollutants and carbon emissions. After some back and forth, we discovered that our positions were not that far apart, even if we approached from different directions.

The post that required me to summon the most courage and grace was a response to a famous media personality. This person said something (not for the first time) pretty unseemly. After making clear I was a fan, I said “healthy people don’t act like this”. I went on to encourage that person to recognize that love is stronger than anger or hate. I expressed hope that they would let go of the pain that caused such outbursts, and wished them luck and for them to experience love. I sincerely doubt he saw my response, but a thousand people did; more importantly, this felt like a healthy form of boundary setting on my part.

In several of these interactions, but particularly the last example, I have maintained the sense that I was being the light in the storm. To some degree this makes sense: social media in general and X in particular have become sources and spreaders of darkness. But they don’t have to be: they can just as easily spread light, we just have to decide to utilize them that way. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but my recent engagement feels in alignment; it’s hard to describe or prove, but I just sense these posts connect with the idea of being the light in the storm, my visions more broadly, and my calling (or callings) generally.

I’d love to know what it all means, and where it’s all going. But demanding to know where it’s going keeps getting me stuck. Taking authentic steps, I am learning to trust, will lead me in the right direction. Hopefully I will look back and this journey will all make sense; it does not make sense right now. But, as a friend of mine said today: the first step is understanding and accepting that we are right where we are meant to be.

I love you both. Go Spurs Go.

Love,

Dad