11/03/2023
Monday Mutiny— by Kyle Creek.
Nov 3, 2023
Happy Friday, below are five things that challenged, motivated, or entertained me this past week—hopefully they will do the same for you.
(1) I spent most of last week in Las Vegas, a place that I’ve lived at two separate times in my life (also the city where my son was born). And, honestly, there’s not a damn thing that I miss about living there. For me, Vegas was/is a hard place to live. It feels too manufactured. New York has a real Empire State Building. Egypt has real pyramids. Paris has a real Eiffel Tower. Florida has real sharks (in the ocean; not in casinos or giant fish tanks). The older I get, the more I realize that I have a striking need for—and attraction to—real people, places, and things. And, well, as fake as the city itself is, some of my best friends live in Vegas, so I do enjoy visiting Vegas to see them. I’m also a real sucker for a good tiki bar, of which, Vegas has a few: Frankie’s, Golden Tiki, and the new Stray Pirate.
(2) While packing up my stuff in the green room following a TV appearance that I made last Thursday, I met a boy who looked uncannily like William from my new book. The boy’s mother told me how much she had enjoyed my segment, and I offered her a copy of the book because not only did her son look just like William, but I also wanted to thank her for her kind words. She then went on to tell me that her son’s favorite toy when he was younger was, get this, a plush squid. And, well, anyone who has read the book knows how incredibly weird that is. C’mon, he looks just like William AND has a favorite squid? What are the odds?
Anyway, it was a cool occurrence that reminded me of the connectiveness of our world.
(3) In one of the aforementioned Vegas tiki bars, my buddy and I were talking about life, love, and living in Florida. During this conversation, he said something to me, “Kyle, you know how I do things,” in regard to how he had handled a particular dating situation, and I said to him, “Well, maybe it’s time you start doing things differently.”
After a long pause, he said, “Sh*t. You’re right.”
I went on to explain to him how much I had to change my own way of doing things in order to have the life and the relationship that I have now. Had I kept doing things the way that I was, I would have continued receiving the same unwanted results, over and over.
And, well, I feel like this is a valuable message to share with you here in this newsletter today.
What do you need to do differently in order to have what you truly desire?
(4) There’s a lot of current political talk about changing the world, fixing society, etc.—so, when I saw this Tolstoy quote come across my Instagram feed the other day, I saved it.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” —Leo Tolstoy
(5) On Saturday, UPS misdelivered a package of ours (again). And, as Kelsey went to go retrieve it, she ended up in a long conversation with the neighbor who had received it, but also with another one of the neighbors who had recently returned from his cabin in North Carolina. The man who had returned from North Carolina is an elderly guy—in his nineties, but more active than most twenty-year-olds—and he’s always looking out for us. He stopped Kelsey as she was heading back into our driveway to give her a jar of blackberry jam with “no added sugar” (because he remembers everything we’ve ever told him) that he bought for us from his favorite local store in NC.
He was so stoked to share this with us—stating, “You just can’t get this anywhere else”—and both Kelsey and I thought it was so cool of him to think of us.
You really don’t understand and appreciate community until you experience it. When I lived in NYC, I didn’t even know my neighbors’ names—and we shared a common wall.
Anyway, I truly believe a lack of community is at the core of all the negative s**t that is plaguing our current society. Here’s the thing: Most people are good, most people are beyond kind, and most people just want to belong. So, as you go into this coming week, don’t fall for anything that tries to convince you of the opposite.
