Joe Palumbo has been a national champion, an All-American, a lawyer, an NFL intern, a sports agent, a wealth manager for professional athletes, and a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt. Somehow, that’s only the setup.

We talk about NIL money, why some athletes handle wealth better than others, the recurring dream that college football gives you one more year of eligibility, and the point in middle age when your body begins escalating the messages. Then the conversation turns to what football taught men of our generation to hide - and how Joe and his family are using Kristin’s Fund and a free football camp to teach boys a healthier version of strength.

Interested in supporting Kristin’s Fund? Click here.

📚 Chapters

0:00 Introduction

1:38 Joe Palumbo’s path from Ithaca to the NFL

3:57 Inside the Jets, Chargers, and NFL league office

8:11 Becoming a sports agent

11:28 Leaving agency life for wealth management

13:17 NIL and teenage athletes making real money

15:31 Why some athletes handle money better than others

18:42 Jiu-jitsu, middle age, and listening to your body

24:58 Coach Butterfield and the 1991 national championship

27:49 Why former players still dream football isn’t over

33:55 Kristin’s Fund and preventing domestic violence

39:50 Teaching boys a healthier version of masculinity

45:59 Why speaking up is leadership

49:29 How the camp works—and how to support it

52:31 Private equity comes for youth sports

So this newsletter will have to suffice.

Pre-season high school football camp has been taking up about eight hours of my day, between actually being there and prepping for it. That is certainly better than when it was my full-time job at the college level. Except for the fact that when I was doing that, the only other thing I was trying to be reasonably good at was not being a shitty husband and seeing my daughter while she was awake.

There were mixed results with that.

When I was younger, if a particular day or week involved some nights with four hours of sleep, so be it. That was not necessarily a healthy system, but it was technically a system. At fifty-one, four hours of sleep is no longer a sacrifice. It is a threat to the public.

A few days ago, while my daughter had her legs in an MRI machine1, I sat in the waiting room watching practice film. The day after that, I was in Starbucks gameplanning because our power was out.

I was working in that waiting room, and in that Starbucks, because I cannot function on four hours of sleep anymore. If I do that now, I become a person who should not be allowed to operate a motor vehicle, answer an email, or speak to his family without legal representation.

When I was younger, four hours of sleep was sometimes just part of the job. So was occasionally being like the boss in The Bear (more on that later).

Back then, I could justify almost anything in the pursuit of winning a game. Maybe age has made me wiser. Mostly though, I think it has just made me less willing to use winning as permission to be an asshole.

My time crunch now is not caused by football. It is caused by me. When I see something that is wrong, or fixable, I want to help. I’ve never been very good at just punching a clock.

Except for the six months I spent loading trucks at UPS. I was perfectly content clocking the hell out of that place.

What I hadn’t anticipated before getting back into coaching was how difficult it is to do something casually when you know how to do it seriously.

At our scrimmage last week, my job consisted of sitting in the press box and helping. There was also a laptop in front of me streaming the game in real time. After each offensive series, we could watch each play from multiple angles to determine what had happened.

Back in my day (yup, just said that), we determined what happened by gathering four coaches with four separate and partial views of the game, and asking them to reconstruct it like Oliver Stone and the Zapruder Film.

Nobody saw the entire play. And if you did, it meant you were shirking your responsibilities. “Sorry Coach, I missed it,” was a somewhat common retort to the age-old question of, “What the fuck just happened!?!”

And as in life, sometimes guys were wrong. Particularly when it was their group that might have been responsible for an issue. The phrase “That wasn’t my guy” has probably been spoken on more football sidelines than “BLOCK SOMEBODY!” has been shouted from the stands. But when everyone was on the same page, eyes in the right spot, and unattached emotionally from the outcome…we usually got it right.

This was an objectively worse way to get information. It also may have been a better way to learn how to do it.

One of the abilities that I learned from doing it the old-fashioned way was to make adjustments mid-series. That is, before the iPad. Maybe the defense had lined up incorrectly to a formation, and we wanted to run it again before they could get to the sideline and correct it.

Football has changed. For better or for worse is up for debate.

My body has also changed. There is no debate about that…the replay is conclusive. It can no longer survive coaching the way I once coached. But my eyes can still see the game the way all those years taught them to see it.

The game is consuming, but so is competence. I mean, maybe not for everyone. But I’ve never figured out how to be good at something casually. I kinda have to be all in. I think, maybe, a lot of people are built that way.

That feeling is satisfying. But it is also dangerous. Being useful makes it harder to establish limits. Now that my football brain is awake again, it doesn’t understand that it’s supposed to operate only during designated part-time hours.

Last night, we won our first game. I got home past midnight, into bed at 2am, and was back up by 6:15am. Football may have instant replay, but it still has no respect for the duration or quality of my REM sleep.

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Is it possible to love something without letting it own you? I don’t know the answer to that question.

I also still don’t know whether I am going to keep a journal this season. At the moment, life seems to be journaling me…mostly in the form of an overstuffed calendar, a laptop full of film, and a wife who occasionally needs to remind me that football is no longer helping pay our bills.

Perhaps this can count as my first entry.

And here’s that bit from The Bear I promised…

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Speaking of football’s remarkable ability to make people certain about things they may not actually understand, earlier this week I also posted my conversation with Fred Segal, the creator of Freezing Cold Takes. We talked about sports, overconfidence, bad predictions, and why very smart people can become very sure of themselves in almost every part of life.

SilentPunt

Nobody Gets Fired For Bad Predictions

SilentPunt Podcast 221 / August 20, 2026…

Listen now

12 days ago · Henny Hiemenz

DOGS

Fred Segal has spent a decade preserving the predictions sports media would rather forget. As the creator of Freezing Cold Takes and author of the new book Freezing Cold Takes: College Football, he has built an archive of certainty gone bad—from coaches crowned too early to games declared over before they were.

In this episode, Fred and I talk about why coaches rely on “coach speak,” what Bobby Ross’ journey from “Bobby Loss” to national champion reveals about judging people too soon, and how Fred’s years as a lawyer—and his father’s enormous collection of old sports magazines—prepared him for this work.

We also get into what today’s sports-media environment has lost: context, mystique, independent access, and the patience to see more than one clip or one bad play. Fred revisits the Peyton Manning–Charles Woodson Heisman race, shares a spectacularly ill-timed piece of BYU trash talk, and considers whether the culture of keeping receipts has made commentators any more careful.

Spoiler: nobody gets fired for bad predictions.

📚 CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro music and episode setup

0:47 Why “an incomplete history”?

2:36 Choosing what made the book

3:23 Why coaches use coach speak

4:37 Bobby Ross becomes “Bobby Loss”

8:11 Charlie Weis and premature coronations

9:01 How a lawyer created Freezing Cold Takes

10:38 Fred’s dad and the magazine archive

11:14 What modern sports media has lost

13:03 Too much access, less mystique

14:40 One bad play becomes a whole narrative

16:03 Manning, Woodson, and the unknown unknowns

18:25 Trash talk that aged terribly

20:05 Cameras, performance, and lost authenticity

21:06 Do receipts make pundits more careful?

Phil Villapiano has stories. About growing up on the Jersey Shore and watching Bruce Springsteen perform before most people knew his name. About being drafted by the Oakland Raiders without knowing exactly where Oakland was. About surviving the brutal practices and even longer nights of the Raiders’ legendary training camps. And, of course, about spending the rest of his life arguing with Franco Harris over what really happened during the Immaculate Reception.

In this episode, Phil joins me to discuss his new memoir, Just Tackle Baby, and the remarkable life behind it. We talk about John Madden, Al Davis, John Matuszak, the glorious chaos of the 1970s Raiders, and the unlikely friendship Phil developed with Franco after finding himself on the wrong side of football’s most famous play.

Phil also explains why the title of his book means more than making tackles. Whether it was football, a 35-year career in shipping, writing a memoir, or dealing with the problems life continues to present, Phil has approached everything the same way: prepare, compete, and tackle whatever is in front of you.

📚 Chapters

0:00 Intro: Phil’s very New Jersey morning

0:40 Bruce Springsteen before he was famous

3:53 The night Springsteen sang “Jersey Girl”

6:06 How Just Tackle Baby became a book

9:58 The hard work of writing a memoir

15:02 From the Jersey Shore to Bowling Green

22:56 Drafted by Oakland - and needing an atlas

26:44 The Raiders’ brutal, beer-soaked training camps

32:52 Why Phil couldn’t keep hating Franco Harris

37:11 “If I don’t drop my arms, there’s no Immaculate Reception”

40:18 Franco’s 4:07 call every December 22

42:42 The interception that sealed the Sea of Hands game

47:02 Christian Bale, Nicolas Cage, and the Madden movie

51:23 Why Just Tackle Baby is bigger than football

53:26 Closing thoughts

Therefore, you also might not see the world through the same lens as a 51-year-old bald man whose brain is perpetually trapped in 1995. While I’m not sure if that is a result of kick-out blocks, Natty Light, or the traumatic emotional repression brought on by the Catholic religion, I have chosen not to seek treatment.

One of the side effects of my condition is seeing pretty much every life situation through the lens of the show Seinfeld. Walk nine miles on a torn meniscus and broken leg? Yes Henny, it is certainly coherent to compare yourself to George saving the beached whale.

Shopping for potato chips at the grocery store? Absolutely, there is totally shrinkage.

Or, how about eating a yummy peach, and all day long walking around with the words “MACKINAW PEACHES JERRY!!” and “they’re real, and they’re Spectacular!” bouncing1 around your damaged but still mildly functional brainal capacitor.

Because goddammit that peach was real AND spectacular. Whether or not it was from Mackinaw is irrelevant to my condition.

Anywho, you’ve been warned. Keep reading this wildly unhinged rant at your own peril.

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A few years ago I started writing again. I won’t bore you with those details, but I will tell you that I imagined myself as Kramer - basically, working for free.

I would just start acting like a writer and see what happened. It was my very own version of ‘fake it till you make it’.

Demented and Sad?

Maybe.

And if you got that last reference without the spoiler, you’re my people.

Now that we’re friends, I need you to do the thing that friends do: help me move.

Relax. Your lower back is safe.

Help me move from being Kramer to being Jerry’s friend Seth. If you don’t remember who Seth was - congratulations!!! You still have a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex!

Seth was Jerry’s old friend, who Jerry convinced to skip a very important meeting at his job to join him for lunch. When Seth is subsequently fired for missing the meeting, he winds up working at Kenny Rogers Roasters.

The thing is, Seth likes working at Kenny Rogers Roasters. Not because he was making a shit ton of money. But because he was working at a happy, fulfilling job. He wasn’t making fast food, he was making good food quickly.

I’m not writing War and Peace. Hell, I’m not even writing one of those smooshy gooshy girly books with Fabio on the cover. Although I personally know several housewives in Wisconsin who would devour that shit.

For the record, my wife is not one of those housewives. She’s a boss-ass bitch who has somehow remained ensconced in marital bliss with the man responsible for the previous paragraph.

Anyway, no disrespect to housewives, romance novels, or Fabio’s magnificent sternum. Every book deserves a reader. Even, theoretically, mine.

Which is where YOU come in. If you subscribe to SilentPunt because you like my writing, or because you like my podcasting, I’m cordially inviting you to forward this email - or better yet, TEXT it! - to one other like-minded human. There has to be more than two of us, right???

Ok, just checked…Substack currently says there are about 570 of us. But apparently like only 43% of you open my emails. To the other 67% I say:

Whhhyyy am I asking you this? Simple really:

No no no, I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, I’m asking you this because I am currently looking for an agent to help me sell my book. And agents look at things like how many people subscribe to you as a gauge of whether or not whatever you produce might be sellable.

All this talk of subscribers, agents, and sellability suddenly has me feeling like Nicolas Cage in The Family Man: “I’m going into arbitrage, Kate. Turns out, I have a knack for it.”

Shout-out to all of my peeps on here who have already lent me a helping hand, it means more than you realize. And an extra-special shout-out to the three of you who read and provided feedback on a sample of my book. I’m not naming names here so your inbox isn’t inundated with assholes asking for help (like me).

In summary (see what a great writer I am? I’m using a phrase we all learned in 9th grade NOT to begin a summary with), I was debating how to close this. Then I realized there was only one appropriate ending for this dumpster fire of a newsletter: one last image.

So, here’s what I - and Kenny Banya - think of all of you:

I read David Epstein’s Inside The Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, in its entirety on one transatlantic flight…which is either a strong endorsement or proof that being trapped inside a metal tube with nowhere else to go is an excellent literary constraint.

I was drawn to this book for two reasons: First, Epstein’s first book, Range, is one of my all-time favorites. And second, constraints (and the ability to overcome them) were a major factor in my career as a football coach.

This book landed at a particularly useful moment for me, as I try to write a book while also writing a newsletter, recording a podcast, coaching football, and apparently holding an unpaid position in the Seinfeld Reference Department. Not to mention being a dad and husband - the two most important jobs, which I naturally left out of the first draft of this paragraph. I’m sure many of you can relate.

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You’re still here???

At 157 pounds, JJ Birden was never supposed to last nine seasons in the NFL. In this conversation, the former Kansas City Chiefs receiver explains how he turned speed, preparation, and a stubborn desire to prove everybody wrong into a career that included catching passes from Joe Montana.

Birden also opens up about his less-documented years after football: business successes and failures, the coffee shop he owned despite not liking coffee, and the life-changing decision he and his wife made to raise five nieces and nephews alongside their three children. Those experiences helped shape his new book, Beat the Coverage: Six Strategic Steps to Win in Business and Life, a practical framework for recognizing opportunities, preparing with purpose, and performing under pressure.

📚 Chapters

0:00 Introduction

0:55 First pass from Joe Montana

3:51 From a 133-Pound Track Recruit to Oregon Football

5:51 Putting in the Reps for Life After the NFL

10:15 Coffee, a Search Engine, and Learning Business on the Fly

13:02 How JJ and Raina Went from Three Children to Eight

16:11 Know the Field—and Draw Up the Game Plan

19:36 Evolving as a Receiver and Catching His First TD from Montana

22:03 Why Beat the Coverage Is Different from His First Book

24:54 Playing to Your Strengths and Covering Weak Spots

27:21 SilentPunt Lightning Round

31:14 Joe Montana’s Endorsement

34:02 Where to Find JJ and Beat the Coverage

It may be worse for my neighborhood.

I used to think dog walking was mostly about exercise, fresh air, and giving an animal the opportunity to inspect the same mailbox post for four consecutive minutes. Three weeks without it has revealed the truth: the walks were actually a neighborhood public-safety program designed to suppress my get-off-my-lawn-ness.

Without the walks, I’ve been sitting more, driving more, and monitoring neighborhood activity with the vigilance of Adam, our resident HOA-Stasi officer. If his champagne-colored Buick makes a second pass by your house, he has opened a file.

Expect a sternly worded email by close of business.

At dog-walking speed, my neighborhood is full of families enjoying summer. From behind a windshield, those same families appear to have released dozens of small, erratically moving insurance claims into traffic.

Suburban Wisconsin summer is mostly brat smoke, lawn stripes, and the quiet knowledge that somewhere behind a parked Tahoe, a wannabe Lance Armstrong is gathering speed.

The first sign is usually a wheel.

You don’t see a child. You don’t see handlebars. You see three inches of front tire and immediately understand that someone with no income, no driver’s license, and only a developing awareness of mortality is about to make a major transportation decision.

One of the great pastimes of summer is driving slowly through your own neighborhood, knowing that at any moment a child on a bicycle may rocket out of a driveway with the serene confidence of someone who has never heard the phrase “claims adjuster.”

They never ease into the road, either. There’s no cautious roll to the end of the driveway. No pause. No left-right-left.

They launch.

Everything else in my Midwestern neighborhood is carefully controlled - the lawn height, the mailbox color, the approved shades of beige. The children, meanwhile, enter traffic like they’ve been fired from a T-shirt cannon.

And the driveway launch is only the opening maneuver.

Next comes the diagonal intersection crossing, in which a fourth grader enters from one side of the road, looks backward over his shoulder, and somehow continues traveling forward toward a location no civil engineer could have predicted.

Adults tend to view an intersection as a place where two roads meet. Children view it as an episode of Fixer Upper on HGTV - more open concept than a ranch house after Chip Gaines finds a sledgehammer.

Then there is the one-handed cruise: one hand on the handlebars, one hand holding an iPhone, both feet wearing Crocs, and the helmet either missing entirely or resting as far back on the head as possible, so as not to distract from his beautifully coiffed Lamma helmet.

The child cyclist’s understanding of traffic law begins and ends with one fact: you have brakes.

Meanwhile, every adult driver in the neighborhood has adopted the posture of a bomb technician. Every trip to Kwik Trip becomes a suburban Hurt Locker: 17 in a 25, right foot poised over the brake, eyes scanning the gaps between parked cars, radio turned down as though silence improves peripheral vision.

Somewhere nearby, Brayden is preparing to enter traffic like Kramer entering Jerry’s apartment.

After a few weeks on alert, ordinary neighborhood objects begin to look like intelligence:

An unattended bicycle lying in a yard becomes a warning.

A basketball rolling toward the street becomes the opening scene of a driver’s-ed film.

A recycling bin is no longer a recycling bin. It’s a cloaking device.

Suburban Wisconsin drivers don’t need self-driving cars. We need cars that can detect when a parked car is being used as tactical cover by a junior member of SEAL Team Schwinn.

Eventually, despite the reduced speeds, lowered radios, and constant surveillance, one of the neighborhood’s uninsured operators breaches the perimeter. The most emotionally complicated moment comes after you slam on the brakes and make prolonged eye contact with the child who just crossed in front of you.

You’re attempting to communicate several things through the windshield:

I am glad you are alive.

I am furious with you.

Where are your parents?

The child’s expression communicates only one thing in return:

Why is that creepy bald guy staring at me?

To be clear, I’m thrilled these kids are outside. I simply believe that any child wishing to enjoy a spontaneous summer afternoon should file a route plan with the village by 4:00pm on the previous business day, and remain at least one Subaru-length from all public roadways.

My sudden interest in neighborhood traffic safety may also contain a small conflict of interest: professional jealousy. For almost three weeks, my knee has adopted the Mitch McConnell doctrine: block all forward movement and wait for everyone else to give up.

Getting off the couch requires planning. Stepping off a curb feels like something that should be discussed with my medical team. Putting on a sock occasionally involves audible negotiation.

Meanwhile, a nine-year-old is launching off a curb like Johnny Knoxville if the stunt coordinator were also nine and the entire production budget had been spent on Gatorade. These children treat their knees as unlimited natural resources. I currently regard mine as a third-string wide receiver: they’re technically part of the team.

But also, they kind of suck.

That may explain the jealousy. They trust their knees, their balance, and the braking systems of complete strangers.

I have therefore begun construction on a bicycle-control tower in my front yard.

Adam’s champagne-colored Buick has already made two passes.

P.S. Before my knee injury turned me into neighborhood traffic enforcement, a shelter dog named Garnet briefly convinced me to stop narrating everything and live in the present. You can read that piece here: “My Meditation Coach Weighs Fifty Pounds and Likes Belly Rubs.”

After a recent trip to Greece, I felt compelled to revisit Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire. It’s one of those historical novels that makes the ancient world feel immediate rather than preserved behind glass. Pressfield is less interested in marble-statue heroics than in fear, discipline, sacrifice, and why people stand their ground when leaving remains technically available.

It also pairs surprisingly well with this week’s newsletter. The Spartans display roughly the same indifference to personal safety as suburban children on bicycles, though they are better organized and considerably more likely to maintain formation. Read it for the sharp prose, the brutal battle scenes, and the deeply human portrait of people confronting impossible odds…then remember it the next time you nearly flatten a mop-headed 10-year-old cruising on his Huffy.

For the many new readers here: the basic rhythm at SilentPunt is that one week I write an essay, and the next I talk to someone interesting. The subjects bounce between middle age, marriage, parenting, sports, and whatever fresh indignity adulthood has provided lately.

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Jason Botts grew up dreaming of spending one day in the major leagues. He eventually played parts of four seasons with the Texas Rangers - yet by the time his career ended, that original dream had somehow become a ten-year standard, and what once would have felt impossible no longer seemed like enough. We talk about why high achievers keep moving the goalposts, how timing and opportunity shaped his career, the fight-or-flight reality of living on baseball’s roster bubble, and what his friendship with Rick Ankiel taught him about the mental side of the game.

(You can read Jason’s excellent writing at Have Bat Will Travel)

The conversation eventually turns to the harder question of what happens after the uniform comes off. Jason opens up about losing his identity, finding a second act through mentoring and writing, and raising two baseball-playing sons without making his career the standard they must meet. We also cover conversations with his cousins from left field in an almost-empty Oakland Coliseum, an 18-hour Mexican winter-ball bus ride, and why he would rather face Aroldis Chapman at 105 miles per hour than throw batting practice to a frustrated teenager.

📚 Chapters

0:00 Making the Majors—and Still Wanting More

5:02 The Oakland Coliseum and the Memories That Last

12:00 Sammy Sosa, Ian Kinsler and the Role of Opportunity

14:17 The Mental Game: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect

18:52 Rick Ankiel, the Yips and “One More Chapter”

22:58 From Ballplayer to Mental-Performance Mentor

24:49 Life on the Roster Bubble: Years of Fight-or-Flight

28:42 Retirement, Identity Loss and Finding Writing

33:19 Raising Sons in the Shadow of a Pro Career

36:25 When His Son Wanted to Quit Baseball

40:12 Preparing Kids for Life Beyond Sports

42:36 The SilentPunt Lightning Round

45:16 An 18-Hour Mexican Winter-Ball Bus Ride

47:41 Finding a Baseball Community on Substack

This, thankfully, ends today.

Ladies, I know many of you are struggling right now with what the medical establishment calls “perimenopause,” a mysterious transitional phase involving hormones, sleep disruption, hot flashes, mood changes, brain fog, night sweats, and the sudden urge to murder your husband because he had the audacity to ask you yet again where the scissors were.

But what if I told you perimenopause is not a problem?

What if I told you it is actually an opportunity?

More specifically, what if I told you it is an opportunity to purchase my 12-week Female Hormone Dominance Protocol for $97, or four payments of $32, because math is also going through a transition.

Now, I should be clear: I am not a doctor. I have never been a woman. I have not personally experienced perimenopause, menstruation, childbirth, breastfeeding, or the quiet rage of being asked where the ketchup was by someone staring directly at the ketchup.

But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

The problem with modern women is not that their estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, thyroid function, and nervous system are changing in a complex biological cascade that can last for years.

The problem is mindset.

Most women approach perimenopause reactively. They say things like, “I’m exhausted,” or “I don’t feel like myself,” or “Why, all of the sudden, am I sweating more than a whore in church?”

This is victim language.

A high-agency woman does not “have a hot flash.” She enters a spontaneous thermogenic activation window.

The first step is reframing:

She does not “wake up furious.” She receives a cortisol based push notification from God.

She does not “forget why she walked into the pantry.” She is practicing neurological minimalism.

The second step is getting morning sunlight directly into your eyes before checking your phone, because the sun has been rising for 4.6 billion years, but apparently needed a guy in Vuori joggers to explain that the sun works better if you suffer first.

Now, some of you are saying, “I have children. I have a job. I have aging parents. I have a body that feels like it is being run by a substitute teacher.”

That’s fine. You just need to wake up earlier.

Once awake, begin with box breathing, cold exposure, and the quiet belief that suffering counts as strategy.

Cold plunging is essential because nothing tells a woman’s endocrine system to calm down like sudden aquatic violence before sunrise.

Also, hydrate. But not with water.

Water is municipal hydration. You need venture-backed hydration.

You need electrolytes.

Preferably mine.

My supplement, Lady Salts, was designed specifically for women navigating midlife hormone optimization by a team of researchers I have described as “world-class” but will not be named for legal purposes.

Each packet contains sodium, magnesium, trace minerals, powdered confidence, and a faint aftertaste of financial dependency.

Use code BROEXPLAINS10 for 10% off your first order.

Now, we need to talk about strength training. Women in midlife absolutely need strength training, which is why I, a man who learned this fact during a YouTube interview with another man, will now deliver it as though I descended from the sauna carrying two tablets that said: “respect the kettlebell.”

Lift heavy, recover harder, and never confuse exhaustion with information. Your body is not warning you.

It is negotiating.

And we do not negotiate with inflammation.

Chronic fatigue is really just unprocessed victimhood leaving the body.

Of course, none of this works without sleep. Sleep is the foundation.

If you are not sleeping, simply improve your sleep. Avoid screens, alcohol, and pesky feminine hormones. It is also preferred that you not sleep beside someone who performs a full-body exorcism every time he rolls over.

If night sweats persist, ask yourself: have I invested enough? Not emotionally. Financially. Because having symptoms is one thing. Paying a man to organize them into three tiers is transformation.

And transformation requires proximity, accountability, and a recurring billing relationship.

That’s why I created three simple tiers:

The Awareness Tier — $97
A downloadable PDF titled “Is This Estrogen or Excuses?” which explains that your symptoms are real, but also maybe your fault.

The Protocol Tier — $397
Everything in Awareness, plus 14 videos where I explain your endocrine system using football terminology, military leadership principles, and a dry-erase board I clearly bought for this.

The Inner Circle — $997
Weekly group coaching, private community access, and the opportunity to be misunderstood by me in real time.

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Perimenopause is not happening to you. You are allowing it.

I know that sounds harsh, which is also something my wife, whom I love and who continues to choose me for reasons I try not to overanalyze, has gently explained while asking me to become a better listener.

Or something like that.

I don’t really remember.

For too long, women have been told this stage of life is something to survive.

I have one word for that:

You should not merely survive perimenopause.

You should dominate it. Monetize it. Build a personal brand around it.

You should emerge from it leaner, calmer, stronger, fully optimized, and prepared to explain your transformation on a podcast hosted by a man who nods solemnly while staring at your tits.

Because ultimately ladies, this is not about hormones. It is about discipline, preferably yours, monetized by mine.

The female body is not confusing. It is simply under-coached.

So the next time you wake up at 2:47 a.m. drenched in sweat, filled with rage, wondering whether today is the day you finally tell Susan, her Pilates mat, and her entire moisture-wicking worldview to fuck all the way off, remember:

You are not broken.

You are not alone.

You are not crazy.

You’re just one cold plunge, six supplements, two affiliate links, and a total lifestyle overhaul away from becoming the kind of woman a man on the internet can finally understand.

This week’s book recommendation: The Saboteur by Paul Kix.
I loved this book, partly because it reads like a novel, but mostly because it reminded me why I keep choosing nonfiction over fiction. No offense to made-up people, many of whom have been through a lot, but I would almost always rather read about some unbelievable real-life lunatic I somehow never knew existed.

In this case, that lunatic is Robert de La Rochefoucauld, a French aristocrat who became an anti-Nazi commando, which is already a more interesting résumé than anything LinkedIn has ever produced. The book has escapes, disguises, sabotage, courage, Nazis getting what’s coming to them, and the general feeling that history has been hiding better stories than most screenwriters can invent.

It pairs well with this week’s piece because both are about dangerous confidence, though only one kind is historically useful. The difference is that La Rochefoucauld used his energy to fight Nazis, while today’s male wellness influencer uses it to sell creatine to women trying to sleep through a biological coup.

This week on the SilentPunt Podcast, I’m joined by Christopher Warner, author of Playing for Keeps: Legendary Athletes in Combat During World War II. Since this is a July 4th edition of the show, we talk about athletes who did more than simply serve during the war. These were men who had already become champions, stars, record-setters, and future Hall of Famers — and then found themselves in places where the stakes were no longer wins, losses, trophies, or box scores.

Chris and I get into the stranger-than-fiction life of Barney Ross, Bob Feller’s decision to enlist after Pearl Harbor, Tom Harmon’s survival story, Emlen Tunnell’s heroism in the Coast Guard, Yogi Berra’s D-Day experience, and Chuck Bednarik’s time as a B-24 gunner before becoming “Concrete Charlie.” We also talk about Chris’s own background as an athlete, writer, actor, and historian, and why he wanted the book to move across baseball, football, boxing, track, swimming, bobsled, and more.

📚 Chapters

00:00 — Welcome to the July 4th episode
01:13 — Barney Ross: boxer, Marine, war hero, and survivor
06:59 — Jack Ruby, Stallone, and the strange threads of history
08:15 — Who made the book — and why some famous names didn’t
10:07 — Chris Warner’s path from athlete to writer
13:31 — Bob Feller, family history, and the roots of the book
16:59 — Uncle Tom, glider pilots, and family war history
18:34 — Tom Harmon: Heisman winner, plane crashes, and survival
23:48 — Warren Spahn, false praise, and getting war stories right
26:07 — Veterans’ silence and what they carried home
29:22 — Emlen Tunnell: heroism, race, and forgotten greatness
36:52 — Yogi Berra, D-Day, and real pressure
38:25 — Chuck Bednarik, B-24s, and football toughness
43:02 — Where to find Playing for Keeps and final thoughts

Within about five minutes, everyone starts becoming a type. There is the tough kid, the soft kid, the grinder, the head case, the leader, and the problem child. There is the kid with a great motor, the kid with bad body language, the locker-room guy, the cancer, and the coach’s son. Not that kind of coach’s son, the other kind.

The kind who somehow knows the playbook and also needs to be told not to throw his helmet into a water cooler.

The labels are not always wrong, which is what makes them dangerous. Sometimes the tough kid really is tough, the problem child really has made three grown men stand in a hallway with their hands on their hips, and the kid with bad body language really does look like organized football was invented specifically to inconvenience him.

Most labels begin with evidence, but a label can be accurate and still incomplete, and incomplete is where people usually get interesting.

Coaches use labels because coaches have to survive. You’re sorting through teenage bodies being ravaged by more testosterone than Jose Canseco at a Limp Bizkit concert. A label gets you through the day and gives shape to the chaos. It lets a staff talk quickly about a hundred different people without turning every meeting into a Dostoevsky novel fueled by Diet Coke and sunflower seeds.

The danger comes later, when the label stops being a note and starts becoming a verdict. That’s when the word begins doing more work than it’s earned.

Sometimes the lazy kid is overwhelmed. Maybe the tough kid is terrified. What if the selfish kid is trying to survive something nobody else can see? And how about the natural leader who is not leading as much as performing leadership, because everyone decided he was that guy before he had the courage to tell them he wasn’t?

That, I think, is the part we miss. The label itself is not the sin. We all use labels because the world is too large and too complicated to see every person as a blank page every time they walk into the room. Coaches, parents, teachers, bosses, fans…we all use them, often on ourselves first. The problem is when the label becomes a substitute for curiosity.

That’s when “lazy” means we stop asking why. When the label is “tough,” we stop wondering what it costs. And once we decide he is a “problem,” we stop asking what the problem is trying to tell us.

The longer I coached, the more I realized players were not the only ones being reduced that way. Coaches were too. A head coach is not famous in any real sense, especially not at the small-college level. Nobody is following you through an airport. Nobody is pretending not to notice you at a steakhouse. There are no photographers hiding in the shrubbery outside the Division III coaches’ office, unless recruiting has gotten significantly more aggressive since I left.

But it’s still a public-facing job, and public-facing jobs have a way of turning a person into whatever someone else needs him to be. Players see you through playing time. Parents see you through their sons. Administrators see you through wins, complaints, graduation rates, and whether the offensive line coach said something unfortunate near a buffet.

Alumni see you through whatever the program was when they were young, invincible, and apparently running a 4.6.

To some people, you are the guy who changed their kid’s life. To others, you are the idiot standing between their kid and greatness. Sometimes, in my experience, you can be both of those things to the same family.

I once coached two brothers from the same family, a few years apart, and they gave their father two completely different versions of me. The older son had the kind of experience every coach wants a player to have. He fit, he worked, he grew, and his father saw our program as part of the reason. To him, I was the right coach in the right place at the right time.

Then the younger son came along, and it was different almost from the beginning. He was not the same player or the same worker, and for whatever mistakes I made, I could never quite reach him. Eventually, he quit. Somewhere in there, his father’s view of me changed almost completely. Maybe he had fair reasons. I’m sure I gave him a few.

But I had not become an entirely different person. I had the same temperament, same whistle, and probably the same oversized polo. His angle on me had shifted, and once it did, the story changed with it.

That doesn’t make the father evil. It makes him human, which is more uncomfortable because it means I can’t dismiss him as an outlier. I’ve done the same thing, and so have you. We meet people through the part of them that affects us most directly, then we confuse that part for the whole.

The coach becomes my son’s playing time. The teacher becomes my daughter’s grade. The boss becomes the reason my life is harder. Once that happens, curiosity has to fight uphill because the label has already done the work for us.

This is where sports can teach us something, even while it’s busy teaching us that the prevent defense mostly just prevents joy. Football gives us labels because football needs labels, but the scouting report is not the person. It’s the first attempt at understanding the person, and the first attempt is almost never the final truth.

If that can happen to a small-college football coach, imagine what happens when the person being labeled is famous. Most of us get the mercy of being forgotten. We change jobs, move towns, lose weight, gain weight, start therapy, buy reading glasses…become the kind of person who says “I’m not downloading an app to buy a sandwich,” and eventually the old label loosens.

Famous people don’t usually get that luxury. Their first label gets archived, replayed, mocked, and sometimes turned into a costume. Sports are especially good at this because sports have no patience for a complicated interior life. There’s a scoreboard, a highlight package, and a studio show that has to get to the truck commercial before the next game kicks off.

A full person gets edited into something portable; not always false, and often not false at all, but small enough to say quickly and repeat forever. After a while, the shorthand stops feeling like shorthand and starts feeling like the whole story.

This is part of what has pulled me toward John Matuszak, because he is almost too easy to label. He can be introduced as the former No. 1 overall pick who became a Raider wild man, a two-time Super Bowl champion, and, somehow, Sloth from The Goonies. He’s the kind of person whose life can be made to sound like a triumph, a joke, or a warning…depending on who is doing the remembering.

None of those labels are completely wrong, which is what makes them durable. But none of them are enough. The more I’ve researched him, the less interested I’ve become in proving the labels false, because that would be too easy and probably dishonest. The more interesting question is how many different truths had to pile up before one man became that easy to summarize.

I recognized something in him before I fully understood it. Not because our lives had much in common on the surface; he was a famous, enormous, two-time Super Bowl champion…and I once made a living yelling at 18-to-22-year-olds about pad level. My own life has been slightly less cinematic, unless someone wants to greenlight a very tense independent film about Division III recruiting and ballpoint pen thievery.

But I understood something in the search. I understood the feeling of wanting to be accepted without having to keep auditioning for it. I understood wanting someone to see past the useful version of me, the funny version, the tough version, the coach version - whatever version I’d built because it got me through the day - and still choose to stay.

I was lucky. I found that kind of acceptance in marriage. It didn’t fix everything, because marriage isn’t a spa treatment for the soul, and anyone who says otherwise has never argued over the proper way to load a dishwasher.

But it gave me something I had spent a long time needing. It gave me a place where I didn’t have to perform quite so hard, and once I became more comfortable in my own skin, I became more curious. About other people, yes, but maybe more importantly, about myself.

That may be the real thing labels steal from us: not just curiosity about other people, but curiosity about the names we have learned to answer to. Given enough time, a label can become so familiar that it starts to feel like a fact.

We all use labels because we have to. There are too many people, too many stories, too many moving parts, and too many practices where somebody forgot his cleats despite somehow owning fourteen pairs of slides.

We need shortcuts. But every once in a while, it’s worth asking whether the shortcut has become the whole map. Because a label can tell us where the story starts.

But curiosity?

Curiosity is what keeps it from ending there.

QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS:

What’s a label someone put on you that was partly true, but incomplete? And what did it miss?

This week’s recommendation: Legacy by James Kerr.
As longtime readers know, I generally hate self-help books, mostly because too many of them feel like a LinkedIn post that got into CrossFit1. But Legacy is different. It’s technically about the New Zealand All Blacks, but really it’s about humility, standards, culture, and what a team owes to the people who came before and after it.

It pairs well with this week’s piece because it asks a better question than most leadership books: not “How do I become impressive?” but “What kind of person does this place produce?” Which is less fun to put on a conference lanyard, but probably more useful.

This week on the SilentPunt Podcast, I’m joined by New York Times bestselling author Tim Brown, whose new book, Nolan: The Singular Life of an American Original, is about a lot more than fastballs, strikeouts, and longevity. It’s about myth, toughness, fathers, Texas, aging, and what happens when a man becomes bigger than the facts of his own life.

Tim and I talk about Nolan Ryan’s complicated place in baseball history and why Alvin, Texas, matters so much to the story. We also get into what old-school masculinity gets right and wrong, the sadness of a career ending even after 27 seasons, the Robin Ventura fight, and the Sid Holland story. Finally, we talk about why the Texas Rangers’ 2023 World Series parade still carries Nolan’s shadow, even though he wasn’t really part of it.

📚 Chapters

00:00 — Tim Brown joins the podcast
00:47 — Jim Abbott, Rick Ankiel, Erik Kratz, and Tim’s previous books
07:53 — Why the end of Nolan Ryan’s career was still sad
10:48 — Life without scoreboards
12:44 — Nolan Ryan, John Wayne, and old-school masculinity
15:47 — Why Alvin, Texas became central to the book
17:39 — Biography, mythology, and the Nolan Ryan legend
22:06 — Young athletes, big-city pressure, and social media
24:44 — Texas mythology and why Nolan became “the Texan”
28:39 — The Sid Holland story
31:35 — Robin Ventura, beanball codes, and empathy for both men
35:17 — The Rangers’ 2023 World Series parade and Nolan’s absence
39:39 — Closing thoughts on Nolan’s lasting hold on fans

That blue-and-yellow thing in my hand is the Lilly Pulitzer pen, the same stupid miracle instrument I have already discussed at a length no court would consider reasonable. The important thing here is that, because of the angle, it appears to be under some kind of restraint. Which is unfair. Maverick, unlike the pen, has earned restraints.

My friend Sheila noticed this and commented that it looked like “the pen is chained to the couch like they used to have at the bank,” before immediately accusing herself of being “Abe Lincoln years old.”

First of all, correct. Second of all, I have not stopped thinking about bank pens since. Because what the hell was going on there? At some point in American history, banks decided the public could not be trusted with pens. Not money. Not loans. Not cashier’s checks.

Pens.

A bank is the only place in America where someone will calmly discuss lending you $380,000 for a house while silently communicating, “But don’t get cute with this Bic, dirtbag.”

Bank pens were not placed on counters. They were placed into custody. Which raises the question: how much bank-pen theft was happening in this country?

Was there a wave of ballpoint crime we have refused to confront as a nation? Were men in Members Only jackets casing the lobby, pretending to ask about CD rates while planning to boost a medium-point blue from First National? At some point, a regional manager in 1982 slammed his fist on a conference table and said, “Enough! Chain them all down!”

And everyone just nodded?

Which is insane, because banks are already built around suspicion: vaults, alarms, cameras, silent buttons under desks, tinted windows, and men named Craig who say, “Let me print that for you,” then disappear for twelve minutes.

And still, apparently, the pen was the vulnerability. Also, have you been inside a bank lately?

Not an ATM. Not an app.

A bank.

A full physical bank. With carpet. Desks. Fake plants. A bowl of lollipops no one has touched since the Obama administration.

I went into one recently because we were going on vacation and I needed more cash than the ATM would give me. More importantly, I needed smaller bills, because I was not emotionally prepared to tip a man twenty dollars every time he opened a door. Even though Raul, to be clear, deserved better than being turned into a budgeting problem by a man in flip-flops.

So I walked into the bank.

Maybe banks don’t even chain pens down anymore. I don’t know. The employees looked so startled by my presence that I didn’t want to make things worse by wandering over to the little desk and checking whether the Bic was still under house arrest.

It felt like I had stepped out of a DeLorean holding traveler’s checks. You could almost hear the employees thinking, “Oh my God. One of them came inside.”

And yet they keep building banks.

Everywhere.

New intersection? Bank.

Old restaurant closed? Bank.

Empty lot next to a mattress store? Bank, obviously, because apparently every American suburb is legally required to have three places nobody enters: a bank, a mattress store, and a vitamin shop that feels like a front for elk testosterone.

I don’t understand this. I already have an app, direct deposit1, twelve passwords, and a security question I answered in 2009 with the confidence of a man who thought cargo shorts were formalwear. Another bank is not solving my problem.

What I need is a building where I can walk in and say, “Can someone please explain what the fuck a sump pump is?”

Because I don’t know.

I know I have one. That sentence, however, is the limit of my knowledge.

There is a hole in my basement with machinery in it, and everyone has agreed, through years of Midwestern silence, that I am supposed to understand its purpose. I don’t. But I do know it involves water, electricity, and financial ruin, which I believe was also the original tagline for Waterworld.

A sump pump is one of those homeowner things you are expected to understand the second you own a house. Nobody teaches you. Nobody sits you down and says, “Here is the basement hole that prevents indoor lakefront property most of the time, unless it suddenly decides not to, at which point everyone will pretend this was somehow your responsibility.”

They just hand you the keys and hope shame fills in the gaps. So no, I do not need another bank. I need Dale’s. That’s the store.

Just Dale’s.

Dale’s would not have an app, a rewards program, or a mission statement. It would have a counter, coffee, and a man with forearms who can tell me whether the thing in my basement is supposed to make that sound.

Dale is sixty-two, has owned three trucks, and can identify a problem by listening to it from the driveway. He knows which noises matter and has never described anything as “user-friendly.” He does not need my password.

You walk in and explain the problem.

“My sump pump made a noise.”

Dale nods once.

“What kind of noise?”

“A bad one.”

“They all sound bad.”

“Should I be worried?”

“You got rain comin’?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should know.”

And he’s right. Of course he’s right. Dale is always right.

This is the kind of institution America needs. Not another glass box where four employees sit around guarding a chained pen. I need a place where a man can tell me:

“That’s your garbage disposal.”

“That’s not mold. That’s Wisconsin.”

“Your deck has two summers left, but don’t host graduation on it.”

“No, you don’t need a new furnace. You need to replace the filter, which I can tell from here you haven’t done since Brett Favre was still complicated in a fun way.”

“Stop touching that.”

That last one alone would save American homeowners billions.

The problem with adulthood is not that nobody helps you. It’s that everyone assumes you already know which kind of help you need.

At some point, without ceremony, you are expected to understand escrow, water pressure, tire tread, sump pumps, Roth IRAs, and why the dishwasher smells like a lake. No one teaches you. They just call you a homeowner and let the basement start making noises.

So no, I don’t need another bank, another lobby, or another frosted-glass office where the pen is guarded like it knows who killed Hoffa.

Build Dale’s. Put him behind a counter. Give him coffee. Let him judge me. Chain the pen if you must.

I don’t need another place to hold my money. I need one that can listen to a 10-second video from my basement and tell me whether I’m hearing a normal house noise or the opening notes of financial ruin.

Author, photographer, humorist, and fellow Substacker Sheila Moeschen joins me to talk about her new book, Book Lovers’ New England: A Guide to Literary Landmarks, which takes readers through the homes, museums, towns, and landscapes connected to some of New England’s most iconic writers.

We also get into the strange persistence required to make creative work, why New England has produced so many iconic writers, whether Catcher in the Rye still holds up, the Statue of Liberty play, and a book giveaway challenge involving New England-ifying famous titles.

📚 CHAPTERS

00:00 — Intro
01:10 — Welcome back, Sheila
03:00 — Humor Saves, Willy Wonka, and Sheila’s new book
04:00 — Creating Book Lovers’ New England
10:40 — The dedication page and “Shakespeare used many words too”
14:20 — A year of literary road trips through New England
20:25 — Why New England produced so many iconic writers
24:20 — Dr. Seuss, pen names, publishing, and creative persistence
34:25 — Sheila’s New Hampshire roots, school years, and PhD path
39:00 — Leaving academia and finding a creative life
42:40 — Football detour: the Statue of Liberty play and the Hail Mary
47:30 — J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, and unfinished work
53:00 — Stephen King, Anthony Bourdain, archives, and wanting more from artists
58:35 — Giveaway challenge, gift ideas, & why this book makes a great day-trip guide
1:03:20 — Go books. Go sports.

Last week, I had a dream that I found a pen.

Not a dream where I could fly. Not a dream where I was being chased through a high school I haven’t attended in thirty years by a faceless man with a chainsaw. Not even one of those dreams where the coach sends you into the game and you realize, with mounting horror, that you have no idea what personnel group, formation, or decade you are in.

No. I dreamed I found a pen.

More specifically, I dreamed I found the pen. The one I’ve been searching for. The one currently sitting somewhere in my house, quietly carrying an emotional burden no writing instrument should ever be asked to carry. In the dream, I found a whole box of them, like some sad suburban Indiana Jones, except instead of recovering the Ark of the Covenant, I had discovered a lifetime supply of medium-point suburban happiness.

I woke up genuinely disappointed.

This is where I am now. I have reached the stage of life where my subconscious is no longer producing sex dreams, flying dreams, or nightmares about failure. It is producing dreams about office supplies.

Which is how I know middle age has officially moved into my subconscious and started rearranging the junk drawer.

The hostage-taker, in this case, is a Lilly Pulitzer pen.

I know. That sentence should not exist. A grown man should not be emotionally dependent on a writing utensil best associated with bright floral patterns, resort wear, and women who look like they know exactly which fork to use at a charity luncheon.

And yet, here we are.

The pen itself is nothing flashy. It does not look expensive. It does not arrive in a velvet case. No one hands it to you while wearing white gloves. It is not the kind of pen a man signs a peace treaty with, or uses to close on a lake house, or dramatically taps against his teeth while pretending to understand what a tax write-off is.

But the second it touches paper, everything changes.

It has weight, but not too much weight. Grip, but not the kind of aggressive rubber grip that makes you feel like you are preparing to write hostage demands. The click is clean. Confident. Adult.

The ink comes out smooth and dark, and the pen moves across the page like it has a pension and a clean driving record.

This was not just a pen. This was Bo Jackson in Tecmo Super Bowl, but for middle-aged handwriting.

It writes better than anything Staples has ever produced, which is both a compliment and an indictment. I have purchased entire packs of pens that seemed personally offended by the idea of ink delivery. This one made even the dumbest note feel slightly more important. Eggs. Trash bags. Call dentist. In that pen’s ink, all of it carried weight.

The problem, of course, is that a pen like this does not simply appear in a man’s life with proper documentation. There was no box. No receipt. No origin story. One day, it was just there, somewhere in the domestic ecosystem, the way certain objects materialize in a house with women in it.

Hair ties. Decorative bags inside larger decorative bags. Water bottles. So many water bottles.

And now, apparently, a pen engineered by NASA and branded by a company that makes dresses for people who summer as a verb.

At some point, either my wife or daughter acquired this thing through a purchase I was not emotionally or financially prepared to investigate.

The clip on the pen says Lilly Pulitzer, which sent me, reasonably, to the Lilly Pulitzer website. This was my first mistake. Lilly Pulitzer, from what I could tell, does not sell pens. They sell dresses, tops, swimwear, scarves, bags, accessories, and various brightly colored items designed to make Midwestern dads realize that they’ve been dressing like Adam Sandler since 1997.

But pens? No.

I was not merely searching for a pen. I was searching for a possibly discontinued women’s resortwear-adjacent promotional pen that entered my home through mysterious channels.

That is a very specific kind of crisis. Because if Bic stops making your favorite pen, you can complain like a normal person. If Lilly Pulitzer stops giving away the perfect pen with a floral blouse purchase, you are left explaining to the internet that you are a grown man desperately seeking backup writing instruments from a women’s resortwear brand. A brand whose target customer packs a second outfit for brunch, just in case brunch becomes an event.

This is how a man who once had actual goals in life ends up typing phrases into Google that make him question every decision that brought him to this point.

“Lilly Pulitzer pen.”

“Lilly Pulitzer click pen.”

“Lilly Pulitzer promotional pen.”

“Lilly Pulitzer blue ink pen smooth.”

“Lilly Pulitzer pen where did this come from please help me.”

I checked Google. I checked Amazon. I considered entering the dark web of promotional office supplies. There are places online that sell bulk pens from banks, hotels, dentist offices, insurance agencies, and, oddly, something called “The Greater Milwaukee Tartar Sauce Authority.”

I don’t know what the GMTSA does, but I assume it has bylaws.

The worst part is that the pen offers no clues. No model number. No manufacturer. No tiny stamp that says Zebra or Pilot or whatever factory in Ohio or Taiwan or Bangladesh is secretly responsible for this miracle. I found myself turning the pen over looking for any microscopic brand evidence like I was trying to solve the Zodiac case with better office supplies.

Then came the knockoffs. Every search produced pens that looked close but were wrong in ways only a man deep inside a stationery spiral could understand. Too skinny. Too shiny. Wrong clip. Suspicious grip.

They were the dating profiles of pens, attractive enough to click on and dangerous enough to regret. Or so I assume, since my dating years ended back when people still had to disappoint each other in person.

I even started judging other pens more harshly. Hotel pens, once a beloved category in my personal economy, suddenly felt unreliable. Bank pens were beneath consideration. The free pen at the doctor’s office had the courage to advertise vein treatment while writing like it needed a referral.

Despicable.

Meanwhile, the original remained on my desk, still writing beautifully, still refusing to explain itself.

That is the quiet panic of the whole situation. The pen is mortal. Every sentence costs something. Every grocery list brings us closer to the end. Every time I use it now, I feel like I’m putting miles on a classic car. I have seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off enough times to know how this ends.

This, I realize, is not a normal relationship to have with an object that could be accidentally used to label leftover taco meat. Especially by a family member unaware they were holding an instrument forged by the gods.

But that may be the point.

There was a time in my life when I dreamed about ambition, escape, glory, sex, football, and whatever else my brain thought might make me seem interesting. Now I dream about a pen.

That sounds sad, but I’m not totally convinced it is. Embarrassing, yes. The kind of thing that should probably stay between a man, his God, and whatever company collects his search history, definitely. But sad? I don’t know.

Maybe this is just what happens when life gets smaller in the best and worst ways. You stop dreaming in movie trailers. You stop imagining yourself sprinting through airports, quitting jobs in dramatic fashion, or standing on some metaphorical mountaintop while the music swells. At some point, the fantasy becomes quieter. Nobody needs to pan out over a skyline. Nobody needs to cut to black.

You just want the right pen.

My life has become so stable, so domesticated, so aggressively dad-shaped, that my subconscious has apparently stopped asking, “What do you desire?” and started asking, “Maybe I can get these in bulk at Costco?”

And honestly, that’s fair.

Because there are categories of joy you cannot understand when you’re younger. You cannot explain to a twenty-three-year-old the pleasure of a good chair, a quiet kitchen, a reliable snow shovel, or finding the exact container lid on the first try.

These are not dreams you chase. They are dreams that sneak up on you while you are busy folding laundry. Then one day you realize your life has not become less meaningful. It has just become weirdly specific.

And if you are lucky, every now and then, one of those specific things writes beautifully. And if that sounds too dramatic for a pen, fine. I accept the charge.

There are worse things to care about. There are worse things to notice. Most of life is not made of enormous revelations anyway. It is made of tiny preferences we slowly gather without realizing they have become part of us.

The coffee mug that feels right in your hand. The sweatpants that no longer belong in public but still deserve respect. The seat on the couch that is not assigned, exactly, but everyone in the house knows damn well belongs to you.

The pen is just one of those things.

Maybe this is pathetic. Or maybe this is adulthood: learning that happiness is sometimes not a grand achievement, but a pen that moves across paper like it has somewhere to be.

I still haven’t found the replacement. The original is still here, still writing, still carrying the full emotional weight of my middle-aged existence. Someday it will die, and when it does, I will handle it with the dignity and perspective of a grown man.

Which is to say, I will probably blame my family.

A small SilentPunt programming note: the last couple weeks have been unusually busy. The men-not-looking-at-each-other piece became my most-read and most-shared newsletter yet, which either means I have finally found my audience or America has more unresolved urinal trauma than previously understood.

Last week’s conversation with Bill George also did really well, and I’ve got some excellent guests lined up for the summer. I also published the first of two reported pieces from inside the UFL’s replay/rules operation (here), with the second coming soon. And yes, the Matuszak book is still very much alive, staring at me from the corner like a 6-foot-8 tax document.

🎙️ Former Coast Guard Academy head football coach Bill George joins the podcast to discuss his book Home Fields, a story that begins with football and service academies but evolves into something much deeper.

We talk about mortality, World War II family history, caring for dying parents, fatherhood, coaching, guilt, and the realization that the things we devote ourselves to can slowly narrow our lives without us noticing.

📚 Chapters

0:06 – Welcome / Why Bill Finally Became “Bill”
1:05 – Writing Home Fields During the Final Years of Coaching
4:00 – World War II Stories, Family History & Rewriting the Book
5:15 – What Makes the Coast Guard Academy Different
9:20 – “You Continue to Build Character and Take Years Off Your Life”
11:35 – The Emotional Cost of Coaching
13:40 – “Football Locks Your Mind”
17:45 – Caring for a Dying Father While Raising a Young Daughter
19:55 – Hospice, Mortality & Spiritual Reflection
22:00 – Lila, Gido & Parenting Through Grief
25:10 – Humor, Marriage & Nancy’s Letter About Motherhood
31:00 – Why Coaching the Offensive Line Was the Best Part of the Job
34:10 – “Who Won Today, Good or Evil?”
37:30 – “Come Upstairs With Me”
40:00 – What Bill Learned About Life, Family & Regret
46:30 – Bill’s Next Book & Why All Proceeds Go to Pediatric Cancer Research

Historians believe men first began bonding side-by-side around 12,000 years ago, shortly after discovering fire and shortly before refusing to ask for directions. Experts believe the average American male can withstand approximately 3.7 consecutive seconds of direct emotional eye contact before urgently needing to comment on the weather.

This behavior has persisted across nearly every era of human civilization. Men have discussed grief while repairing fences. They have processed heartbreak while untangling fishing line. They have revealed childhood trauma while staring through windshields, monitoring smoker temperatures, or pretending to be extremely interested in whether rain is expected later in the week.

Entire friendships have existed for decades on little more than shared activities, directional nods, and occasional observations about the stupidity of others.

For reasons scientists still do not fully understand, men appear significantly more comfortable discussing emotionally vulnerable subjects when both parties are jointly focused on a third object. Ideally, that object is moving, on fire, partially mechanical, or capable of causing bodily harm.

Throughout history, men have bonded while hunting mammoths, marching into war, grilling meat, and standing in garages holding beverages they consume at a pace best described as “supportive.” Face-to-face emotional transparency, meanwhile, continues to be treated by many American men with approximately the same caution normally reserved for unexploded ordnance.

And so, as with most strange and deeply ingrained male behaviors, we begin in the cold with two men walking side-by-side pretending not to have feelings.

The Hunter-Gatherer Era

Anthropologists believe the earliest examples of male emotional bonding emerged during prehistoric hunting expeditions, when small groups of men spent days walking side by side, tracking mammoths across frozen landscapes while carefully avoiding direct eye contact at all costs. Communication remained sparse and highly practical.

“Tracks.”

“River east.”

“Weather turning.”

Occasionally, however, one hunter would quietly introduce a deeply personal concern into the conversational ecosystem with the same tone normally reserved for discussing animal migration patterns.

“Think Greg’s marriage is okay?”

This approach proved evolutionarily advantageous. Early men discovered emotional vulnerability became significantly easier when both parties were jointly focused on a large woolly animal capable of trampling them to death. Direct face-to-face discussion, meanwhile, created obvious survival concerns, as it reduced the amount of time available for scanning nearby terrain for predators, collapsing ice shelves, or Greg accidentally provoking another mammoth.

Scientists now believe prehistoric men would rather have fought apex predators with sharpened sticks than begin a conversation with another man using the phrase,

“Can I be honest with you for a second?”

The hunting party itself functioned as an early prototype for nearly every modern male bonding environment that followed: fishing boats, golf carts, garage workshops, fantasy football leagues, and standing around grills pretending to supervise bratwurst.

Somewhere around 10,000 B.C., two hunters likely stood overlooking a frozen valley silently contemplating mortality, purpose, and the crushing uncertainty of existence. After several minutes of silence, one man squinted into the distance and announced:

“Probably gonna snow.”

Emotional equilibrium restored, the hunt continued.

Ancient Rome

The Romans, of course, perfected this dynamic long before suburban dads began discussing mortality over Traeger grills. Historians believe Roman soldiers routinely processed the psychological horrors of war while standing shoulder-to-shoulder sharpening spears, repairing sandals, or preparing crosses for crucifixions. Rarely did anyone say, “I’ve been struggling lately.”

More common was something along the lines of, “Pass me the hammer,” followed by twenty uninterrupted minutes of silence best left unexamined.

This arrangement suited everyone involved. Eye contact was minimized. Vulnerability could remain technically deniable. If a Roman centurion accidentally revealed too much emotionally, there were immediate escape hatches available, including discussing grain supply logistics, criticizing chariot traffic, or invading Gaul again for morale purposes.

Much like modern American men, Roman soldiers understood that difficult conversations became significantly easier when both men were technically focused on something else. In their case, unfortunately, that object was frequently a large wooden execution device.

Somewhere, undoubtedly, two exhausted Roman soldiers stood near a half-finished crucifix around 43 A.D., quietly trying to make sense of the accumulating emotional debris of empire. One finally muttered,

“You ever feel like none of this really matters?”

The other adjusted his nail pouch, stared firmly into the middle distance, and replied,

“So…bad news about Marcus’s goat, huh?”

The Industrial Revolution

By the time the Industrial Revolution rolled around, men had become remarkably efficient at converting emotional vulnerability into shared physical labor. Packed shoulder-to-shoulder into tenements and factories, they spent sixteen hours a day covered in soot, narrowly avoiding industrial dismemberment, and communicating almost exclusively through nods, coughing, and highly specific complaints about pulley systems.

Historians have long argued that labor unions emerged in response to dangerous working conditions. Increasingly, however, evidence suggests they were also one of the first socially acceptable ways for men to gather regularly and say things like, “You gettin’ tired too?” without triggering a full masculinity audit.

The early union hall functioned much like the modern sports bar or suburban garage.

Men stood around holding beverages, discussing management with startling emotional intensity while technically pretending the conversation was about “work conditions.” In reality, many simply craved the revolutionary concept of being seen by another human being for more than fourteen consecutive seconds.

This explains why union meetings often lasted three hours, even though all actionable conclusions were reached within the first eleven minutes.

Meanwhile, tenement life dramatically accelerated the evolution of side-by-side male bonding. Privacy barely existed. Entire families slept separated by little more than curtains and tuberculosis. As a result, men developed advanced emotional survival tactics, including staring out windows while discussing financial despair, smoking silently on stoops, and taking extraordinarily long walks to nowhere…the original male wellness retreat.

Somewhere in lower Manhattan around 1891, two exhausted factory workers undoubtedly stood next to each other, stared into an alley, and briefly achieved emotional intimacy entirely by saying,

“Lotta pressure lately.”

The other man nodded once, spat into the street, and replied,

“Yep.”

Post-WWII America

American men returning from WWI, WWII, and Vietnam had legitimate reasons for staring at the garage fridge instead of each other during emotional conversations. Today’s men mostly inherited the posture without the artillery. At this point, our inability to connect face-to-face feels less like PTSD and more like an evolutionary vestigial tail.

As the decades passed, men became extraordinarily innovative in creating environments where emotional intimacy could occur accidentally. Basements, garages, tailgates, and ice-fishing shacks all emerged as safe spaces where a man could briefly discuss mortality before immediately commenting on propane levels.

In Wisconsin, the basement bar is less a room than a cultural institution. Half tavern, half family bunker, it’s where generations gathered for Old Fashioneds, Packers games, fish fry overflow, and emotional conversations conducted almost entirely while staring at a mounted deer instead of each other.

Peeing Into The Future

By the 1970s, American men1 had achieved extraordinary technological advances. We’d landed on the moon, split the atom, invented color television, and developed the ability to microwave Salisbury steak in under four minutes. And yet, despite all this progress, public bathrooms across the Midwest still operated under the assumption that what men truly wanted while urinating was the looming threat of accidental eye contact.

When I first moved to Wisconsin, Camp Randall Stadium still featured the old trough-style urinals: long communal basins separated by a half wall, with another row of men directly opposite you. This arrangement effectively transformed peeing into a low-level psychological endurance exercise.

Thankfully, the restrooms have since been updated. Somewhere along the line, Wisconsin taxpayers eventually decided that if they were going to publicly fund an 80,000-seat football stadium, they could at least ensure Brad from Manitowoc didn’t have to drain twenty-five dollars’ worth of Leinenkugel’s while accidentally locking eyes with Frank from West Allis across a municipal piss aqueduct.

Modern bathroom design, thankfully, reflects decades of emotional and architectural progress. Today’s side-by-side urinals feature carefully engineered divider walls, forward-facing positioning, and just enough personal space to allow every man in the room to pretend he has entered into a private legal agreement with the wall.

Direct eye contact while peeing at Camp Randall now requires a deliberate ninety-degree head turn, an act generally interpreted either as a Mad Men-era corporate dominance maneuver or the opening stages of a criminal investigation. The rules are simple: Eyes forward…say nothing…see nothing. Pretend every other man in the room is merely a rumor. The entire system functions less like plumbing and more like mutually assured emotional disarmament.

And yet, even as we race toward the future of artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and robot-assisted surgery, male emotional architecture remains stubbornly prehistoric. However, someday soon, a man will step into a fully automated restroom where an AI assistant scans his hydration levels, predicts kidney stone risk, and politely reminds him he has unresolved intimacy issues stemming from seventh-grade basketball.

Even then, he will still stare straight ahead at the wall-mounted advertisement above the urinal and say, “Crazy weather we’ve been having lately.”

Civilization may evolve.

Technology may advance.

But American men, apparently, will continue solving vulnerability with infrastructure.

🎙️ Retirement is supposed to be the goal. Work hard, build something, and one day you’re free…but it rarely feels the way people expect.

This week on the SilentPunt Podcast, I’m joined by author Andrea Hoffman (What Are the Chances) to talk about what actually happens when the thing that defined you ends: identity, expectations, and why freedom can feel a little disorienting.

Because most people plan for money in retirement, but not for meaning.

📚 Chapters

00:00 – Intro + the retirement conversation
01:10 – The “college with money” fantasy
03:30 – Why the reality doesn’t match
06:10 – Financial pressure + easing into retirement
09:00 – Identity and losing the thing that defined you
11:45 – “Third spaces” and building a life outside work
16:20 – Friendship, guilt, and time away from family
21:10 – Status, perception, and how people see you
26:00 – Staying curious and mentally engaged
38:00 – Loneliness, connection, and what actually matters

I’m No Morty Seinfeld

On expectations, and catching the right wave

At a cheer competition not long ago, I was standing next to another dad as the team was warming up backstage. He’s around just enough to be familiar, but not enough to know what’s going on. He couldn’t tell a punch-front from a rewind. Neither can you probably, but that’s beside the point.

He leaned in like he was about to share something important with me:

“My only job,” he said, nodding toward the competition floor, “is to be there when my baby girl runs off the mat and jumps into my arms.”

He said it with a little smile, like he’d cracked the code. Ladies, I know you don’t like it when men ‘mansplain’ things to you. But imagine for a moment, just how much more infuriating it is when you are a man and are ‘mansplained’ to. It’d be like a perimenopausal woman listening to a 20-year-old complain about a hangnail.

Anyway, I gave the guy a nod, because that’s what you do. But I remember thinking two things at the exact same time. First, that this wasn’t even accurate. I’d been to enough of these competitions to know he wasn’t always there for that moment. And second, if I’m being honest, it made me feel a little bad.

You know, the normal amount of bad. The healthy kind.

I felt kinda bad because that’s not what my daughter does to me.

One of the reasons I stepped away from coaching was so I wouldn’t miss this stuff. The weekends, the performances, the travel…the moments that feel like they might matter later. And when she comes off the mat, she doesn’t come looking for me.

She finds my wife. There’s a hug. Sometimes tears, but always talking. A lot of it.

And me?

I’m an onlooker. If you were an outsider looking in, I probably look like the divorced dad who showed up but doesn’t really belong. Not the guy who used to sit on the top step and comb her hair, go on “adventure hikes,” or sit on the floor for hours playing school with her stuffed animals.

“It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about you,” I repeat to myself ad nauseam.

You’d think I’d just spent five days in Tibet, not five hours in an obnoxiously loud, ridiculously named venue where nine dollars buys you twelve cents worth of popcorn and a mild headache.

I think subconsciously, when I retired from coaching to ‘be dad,’ I probably did it for selfish reasons, at least partly. How great would it feel to be worshipped by your kid for being the world’s greatest dad?

But I’m no Morty Seinfeld, I’m a bit player at best. Because parenting is just like every other part of life. We don’t get to choose our role. Most of the time, our roles choose us.

I’m starting to think life is less like a plan… and more like trying to time waves to ride in the ocean.

🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️

In the fall of 2003, my wife and I moved to Wisconsin when I got a job as the offensive coordinator at a small D3 school. It was an upgrade for my career, but also a gamble. The program had won three games total over the previous two seasons, and nearly the entire staff had been fired. This was a last-chance situation.

To no one’s surprise, we started 0–3. Luckily, Week 4 pitted us against the worst team in the league (yes, even worse than us).

“Well boys, if we lose this one, I’ll be gone by this time next week.” That’s what our head coach told us after the third loss. Basically implying that if we lost this next game, to arguably the worst team in America, he would be fired.

We lost.

At 0–4 we were set to host one of the top teams in the conference (and our biggest rival) for homecoming. It was supposed to be a bloodbath.

We won.

We went on to win three of our last six to finish 3–7. We were ecstatic. The players were pumped. And the administration believed we were headed in the right direction.

Three years later, the program had improved enough that our head coach left for a D1 job. I was promoted to head coach. We kept building. Not in a straight line, but in a clear upward trend. By 2010 we were 7–3, with two of those losses coming in overtime.

At the postseason awards meeting, there was a tie for Coach of the Year. I lost the re-vote.

Three weeks later I was fired.

Different administration. Different expectations.

🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊 🏈 🌊

When I was a kid, I used to ride a boogie board in the Atlantic for one week every summer. The older I get, the more I think life is like that. You wait for a wave, ride it as far as you can, then paddle back out and wait again.

Some days there are more waves than you know what to do with. Other days the water is flat and you’re just…out there. Either way, it’s not up to you.

All we can do is pick our spots, take our shot…

and when it’s time…

…be ready to paddle like a motherfu*ker.

🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️ 🌊 🏄🏼‍♂️

If you enjoyed this, you’d enjoy last week’s episode of the SilentPunt Podcast with author . We discuss his 10-year quest for publication, fatherhood, and some other fun stuff:

Next week I’ll be joined by author as we discuss retirement and all the expectations that come with it. If you’ve found the SilentPunt podcast on other platforms (YouTube, Apple, Spotify), please make sure to follow or subscribe to us there as well.

Lee Bacon has published 10 books, landed a movie development deal, and built a writing career most people would have quit on long before it worked.
Before that? Rejections. A lot of them.

We talk about what it actually takes to stick with something when there’s no payoff, how becoming a father changes how you think about work and identity, and why the “non-linear path” might actually be the only real path.

📚 Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:18 Substack vs. traditional social media
1:51 Lee's books
3:51 What exactly is a middle grade book
4:27 How did you find out you had a voice for kids books
7:52 Family life for an ex-pat in Germany
12:15 Balancing career and family
17:22 Fatherhood
20:38 Audible and Substack narration
24:06 Future projects
26:14 Lightning Round

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