Steve Kamb

Steve Kamb

2021: Retrospective

“This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live.”

-Seneca

2021 was a Tale of Two Cities for your boy Steve: the best of times and the worst of times. My 2020 Retrospective covered all of the parts of life that dramatically changed last year:

  • My fiancée Alex and I moved to Nashville and rented a house.
  • A month after that, we postponed our wedding by a full year.
  • Two months later, we bought a house.
  • Outside of two road trips to visit family, we lived like Hobbits.
  • On Christmas Eve, we adopted a second dog, Olive.
  • Team Nerd Fitness exploded in size, and we had our best year ever.

I hoped 2021 would be a “return to normalcy.” Looking back now in the early days of 2022, it’s pretty obvious that “normalcy” has left the f***ing building.

And it ain’t coming back.

2021 Life Updates

Let’s start with the fun, exciting stuff. Alex and I finally got married!

In mid 2020, we pushed our Dec 2020 wedding back by 12 months, which seemed extreme at the time. We knew vaccines were coming and assumed an extra year would give the world a chance to get its shit together.

LOL.

By June 2021, with the vaccine rolling out everywhere and America seemingly on the rebound, we decided to move forward with our wedding. We sent out new Save the Dates, we updated our website, and we put the wheels in motion to get hitched.

And then a month later, the Delta Variant started ripping through the country (Tennessee especially). Unnerved but undeterred, Alex and I (okay, mostly Alex) continued planning for an as-scheduled wedding, hoping that Delta would wind down before our wedding would happen.

What we held strong to: the wedding and all parties were taking place outdoors, in an international location: Aruba! Alex and I had visited the Marriott in Aruba twice prior, and thought it would be the perfect spot for a 4-day party with all of our friends and family.

We also knew all guests would be vaccinated, need to get texted before landing and before returning home. This made us feel much safer about planning a wedding with Alex’s 92-year old grandmother involved!

And then a comical list of “omg what next” events took place:

Our wedding planner got sick just 6 weeks before the wedding. One day it was “can we push our meeting back by an hour?” and then two weeks of radio silence, followed by “She no longer works with this company, we’re assigning you a new wedding planner.” Luckily Jessika who stepped in absolutely CRUSHED it!

Then…weeks before the wedding, first details about Omicron started coming out, and Alex and I just started laughing. We had planned and paid for this 4-day party, and the rules on how to visit Aruba were changing daily. In fact, days before we were scheduled to leave, the CDC changed their plans for allowing people into the country from international destinations.

However, Omicron hadn’t spread widely yet. Cases in Aruba were low. Everybody who got to Aruba had to be tested, we asked all guests to be vaccinated, and everybody had to test on the way home as well.

So we figured it was now or never: The wedding was on!

Of course, the best laid schemes of mice and men…

On the day we were scheduled to travel to Aruba, Nashville had a torrential storm that grounded all flights for hours:

Because we couildn’t get to Aruba that day any more (after getting up at 4AM and having a 6AM flight)…our Covid Tests were now invalid due to a 72-hour window rule.

So we got off the plane…

Rented a car…

Got NEW covid tests…

Then drove to Atlanta…

Spent the night…

And then flew to Aruba the next day.

FORTUNATELY!

For as many things that had gone wrong before the wedding, everything went right from the moment we set foot on Aruban soil.

We started with a welcome Party on Wednesday at sunset, and I was overwhelmed with joy at seeing all of our friends and family in the same place at the same time! I hate the spotlight, but I do love giving people a reason to get together.

So I’ll take it 🙂

Thursday was a beach party (complete with steel drum), followed by a killer rehearsal dinner at Infini.

Friday was the actual wedding. HOO BOY!

I enlisted the help of Barron Cuadro from EffortlessGent.com, who helped me figure out my suit situation so I didn’t look like a complete chump next to my bride. Rented tuxes never fit me correctly, so I invested in a custom suit from SuitSupply. It was fairly pricey, but I’ve never felt more like James Bond.

I also rocked some pretty epic Captain America Cufflinks that let me stay a bit nerdy.

The ceremony itself kicked all sorts of ass: a violinist and guitarist to play our favorite songs. Alex’s gramma served as our “flower granny” which was a highlight.

Alex and I didn’t do any sort of first look, so I didn’t get a chance to see her until she was walking down the aisle.

DAMN SHE LOOKED GOOD!

One of my best friends from college, Megan Morgalis, served as our officiant. My brother Jack was my Best Man, and two of my best friends served as groomsmen.

After the ceremony, it was time for cocktail hour poolside, dinner and dancing:

And then yes, everybody ended up in the pool.

It was surreal having all of our friends and family in one place for a 4 day party. In my opinion, it was worth every penny, every gray hair, and every ounce of shortened life expectancy.

Of course, Alex might feel differently, as she bore the brunt of the planning and stress around each detail…

But now that we’re married she’s stuck with me 🙂

2021 Work

Something I’ve known for a decade finally hit me square in the head, around May of 2021: I’m not a particularly good boss or manager.

I’m terrible at managing people and overseeing initiatives. I don’t particularly enjoy managing and stewarding a ship of 50 people.

I love making stuff, I love writing, I love the creative process. I love sharing my ideas in interesting ways. I like working with my hands. I like DOING stuff.

I am a creator.

And for the past 5+ years, I haven’t been doing much of that.

2021 was the year I rectified this: I dipped my toe back in the creativity pool by creating content daily for Nerd Fitness’s Instagram, and that got me kickstarted. It was mostly memes, but I enjoyed the constraints to keep me creating:

I also started sharing regularly on Twitter, and it seems to be resonating. Here’s my most popular tweet of the year:

I try to think of creating for Nerd Fitness in terms of stand-up comedy:

  • Twitter is my “Tuesday night at the Cellar” attempt to try out new material.
  • For those tweets that truly land, I can then punch them up and incorporate them into my regular act (Instagram).
  • And then if they do well on Instagram, they might make it into my special (long form articles).

Speaking of which, I didn’t write nearly as much long form content as I would have liked. I did publish a few posts on SteveKamb.com:

I’m starting to detect a pattern in the stuff I enjoy writing about: I’m fascinated with the creative process and the challenges of putting one’s work out into the world.

So, as I spent the first half of the year making stuff, I finally accepted the truth that THIS is what makes me happiest: when I’m writing and creating.

It led me to make two big decisions with Nerd Fitness:

I realized I was holding my own company back with my role in my own company.

I made some big changes towards the top of my organization in June 2021, and spent the second half of 2021 unwinding a few things and making some bigger changes.

The most important decision: I promoted my COO, Adam Baker, to become the CEO of Nerd Fitness. I’m shifting myself over to “Chief Creative Officer.”

What does my future look like? More creation. I’m working on a second book proposal, and considering what type of podcast it would be fun to host/create.

It’s taken 6+ months to get this new strategy sorted out, and probably months more before everything is humming along, but for the first time in a long time, it feels right.

My biggest challenge? I’m good when my back is against the wall, or when I’m on the hook to deliver, but less motivated when things are going well.

I’d like to synthetically replicate those things without losing my creative fire.

And I believe this means my best efforts should be on building the habit of “chop wood, carry water.” When I just need to create for creativity’s sake, how do I stay hungry? I believe a second book deadline would help, but also building the daily habit of making things.

I also have tremendous Impostor Syndrome.

I’m fortunate to have very creative and successful friends that inspire the heck out of me. But their work also intimidates me – it’s easy for me to say my work isn’t good enough to be published in comparison to their body of work, but I’ve come to realize I’m playing a different game than them!

And that’s what SteveKamb.com has become, and I hope will continue to become: a place for me to chase my curiosities and see what the hell comes out of it.

2021 House Rennovations Update

I’m now a seasoned home owner (18 months, lol), and this year brought all the highs and lows that come with ownership:

We completely re-did our guest room (well, Alex did most of it), and now it looks absolutely fantastic. Except now it’s pretty much a “dogs lie on the bed and bark at the squirrels in the back yard room:”

We started renovating my home office, which will eventually have floor-to-ceiling book shelves, something i’ve always wanted. I’ve just never stayed in a place long enough to make it worth it!

We got new air conditioning units… and then two days later had a flood of epic proportions.

Torrential rains over the course of one night, and a backed up drain led to 18 inches of water in our basement. Turns out our home gym also had a pool installed:

Fortunately, everything dried out, nothing important was ruined, nobody was hurt, and we turned it into quite the party.

We continued to upgrade our yard and surrounding property, getting our poison-ivy filled hedges removed and a new wooden fence installed:

Oh, and Alex built one HELL of a garden. I helped with the manual labor, but she did all the work:

We put quite a few projects on hold to both financially and mentally prepare for our wedding, but we still managed to get quite a bit done during the year.

Lastly, I noticed a shift in myself towards the end of the year.

I spent the first 12 months of homeownership lamenting the upkeep and renovations. I couldn’t wait to be “done.”

Now? I’m finding a better rhythm.

I work on a house project with Alex, I’m not complaining like a toddler as I do it, and then occasionally take a weekend or two to play video games or catch up on a bunch of books.

2021 Golf and Fitness

In 2021 I managed to do something I hadn’t done since I was 18.

I broke 80 for 18 holes of golf!

I also had my first eagle in 20 years.

And I shot even par on 9-holes for the first time ever.

Even better? I did all of these things in the same round.

On the morning of my wedding.

Wearing sneakers, using rented clubs, 3 beers deep, and playing in 30MPH winds on a tough course in Aruba.

I birdied this hole by putting my tee shot about 8 feet from the cup. Look at how much that flag is blowing!

I shot a 77 at Tierra Del Sol in Aruba, while playing with my dad, brother and childhood best friend.

It was the best round of golf I’ve ever played. I shot a 42 on the front, and an even par 35 on the back, complete with an Eagle and two birdies.

Comically, I think it was because of the wedding later that day that I played so well. I was so scared about getting sunburned that my brain was preoccupied the whole round. Sure, the few beers also probably took some of the edge off!

I got a chance to play a fun round at Sweeten’s Cove outside of Chattanooga, TN too:

I continued my lessons with Errol over at Profectus Golf, and I have no doubt it was these monthly lessons that helped me put each of the pieces of my swing together for my big round.

I finally decided to upgrade my golf clubs, and will be retiring my Titleist 981s (20+ years old!) in favor of new Taylor Made P770s. At Profectus I was hitting these irons a good 15-20 yards farther than my old clubs.

I played 13 rounds of Golf, which is definitely the most golf I’ve played in a year since high school. I was able to drop my handicap down to a 10.7, which is also the lowest it’s been since high school.

NOW! Let’s talk about workouts.

Admittedly, my workouts took a backseat to the rest of my life in 2021. But I still did them. Like brushing my teeth or showering, I worked out because that’s just what I do. I missed more workouts than I have ever missed in a year.

I probably half-assed many of them too.

  • January: 18 workouts
  • February: 16 workouts
  • March: 14 workouts
  • April: 3 workouts
  • May: 12 workouts
  • June: 6 workouts
  • July: 10 workouts
  • August: 11 workouts
  • September: 15 workouts
  • October: 13 workouts
  • November: 15 workouts
  • December: 13 workouts

Although my workouts were probably the most inconsistent they’ve been in a decade, I also stayed in pretty darn good shape. Working out just took a big back seat for me this year with everything else going on.

Fortunately, because of the 15 years of training, I could coast this year and still not need to do anything special to prepare for our beach wedding.

My coach, Anthony Mychal, has a philosophy of “never be more than 2 weeks away from your goal physique.”

That resonates with me.

I do pretty good, 95% of the time.

I took 3 big trips (3+ weeks out in Arizona, a week in San Diego, and 3 weeks in Cape Cod, and didn’t work out at all on any of those trips. It made for some rusty workouts the week after returning, but that’s okay.

2021 Travel

I figured the world would return to normal once we all got vaccinated. And for a time there, we did actually travel.

We took a roadtrip out to Arizona to visit Alex’s parents for a few weeks. The road trip was actually kind of fun, and I got a chance to play quite a bit of golf out there.

We flew out to visit my brother Jack and his wife in San Diego, which was the first time on a plane in 18 months:

I also got to meet up with two longtime internet friends!

Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, whose internet meme game is unparalleled:

And Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, who was nice enough to take me for a ride in his sweet Tesla:

This was at the lowest point of Covid transmission on the year, so we felt very safe and didn’t run into any issues.

We also took a month and drove up to Cape Cod, MA to visit my parents for the summer, and had 3 weeks of relaxation as well.

Oh, and we flew to Aruba for a week for our wedding! So, 4 total flight

2021 Media Quick Recap

I feel like I still spent too much time CONSUMING Media and not enough time CREATING my own…but I at least managed to consume some damn good stuff.

I’m also now realizing this section is kind of half-assed, but that’s alright. I’m trying to downplay media consumption in my life, so maybe it’s appropriate! Ha!

I watched Ken Burn’s Civil War series. For an extra $4/month, PBS unlimited through Amazon Prime is one of the best deals out there. I plan on making my way through lots of other documentaries as time allows.

My favorite special of the year was Bo Burnham’s “Inside,” which totally feels like an accurate next phase for the man that wrote the Kanye Rant.

On the literary front, I read the first 1/3rd of the first 1/3rd of the Churchill Biography. That is gonna be an adventure in itself.

After watching the show on which it was based, I started reading The Expanse Book series, and this quickly took over most of my reading time for months and months. I’m now 6 books in, and can’t wait to see how this wraps up.

I read tons of other books, but none of them gripped me the way Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks did.

I hate hyperbole, but this might be the most important book I’ve read in the past decade. It’s responsible for my large sense of calm I’ve felt since getting married.

Here’s one particular quote that jumped out at me:

“It turns out that when people make enough money to meet their needs, they just find new things to need and new lifestyles to aspire to; they never quite manage to keep up with the Joneses, because whenever they’re in danger of getting close, they nominate new and better Joneses with whom to try to keep up.”

Oliver Burkeman

I also did the impossible – at the behest of my friend Mark, I finally managed to read ALL of War & Peace. And made this video to commemorate the journey:

I played through 4 big video games in 2021:

  • Dark Souls 3 (my grade: B)
  • Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (my grade: B-)
  • Demons’s Souls (my grade: B+)
  • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (my grade: B)

I fell in love with FromSoftware’s video games, and managed to complete all games Miyazaki has created since Demon’s Souls. I’m eagerly anticipating Elden Ring.

Favorite movie of the year: Spider-Man: No Way Home. This felt like epic, homage, and self-awareness done RIGHT.

I’m realizing this is feeling a bit light, and have resolved to start documenting my favorite things as they happen throughout the year so that 2022’s media recap is a bit more beefy!

Or, more individual articles are crafted here on SteveKamb.com. Only time will tell!

2022 and Beyond

I type this recap in early 2022 with an overall sense of calm I don’t think I’ve ever felt.

I feel like I’ve spent the past decade always working towards the next thing, and staying unsatisfied until I get there. Of course, I’d always move the goal posts to further prolong my dissatisfaction, or life would pull the football out from underneath me before I could kick it.

Now? I’m just focused on being present.

I am excited to renovate this house at a reasonable pace, but also to enjoy it along the way.

I’m pumped to get my new office finished, but I’m not in a rush.

I’m excited to continue playing golf and improving my swing, but I’m not going to be disappointed if I have a bad round.

My workouts are back on track, and I plan on bulking up while reaching for a goal of a simple set of 5 on a 225 back squat. Squats have always been my weakness, so I’ll be slowly plugging away at reaching this goal, but at a comfortable pace as dictated by my coach Anthony.

I’m hoping Omicron subsides, and Alex and I can start to rejoin society again here in Nashville. We took this entire pandemic with an abundance of caution, but I also think it’s time to start really putting down roots.

I’ve started doing Morning Pages (as laid out in The Artist’s Way), and it’s helped me start each day in 2022 with actually writing and creating.

Alex and I will take a honeymoon at some point in 2022, provided we can do so safely and without spending the entire time stuck in quarantine!

I’m starting up a book club with some friends.

I’m hoping to finish a book proposal and get a second book deal, but I’m also not too worried how that shakes out. The important part will be writing the proposal and the book.

Let’s see what the rest of this year brings. I don’t have expectations or goals.

Instead, I’m going to work on being creative each day, spending time with my family, and seeing where this leads me.

I’m hopeful for things to improve, but I’m also quite happy with where things are now.

Let’s do this.

###

Bo Burnham’s Brilliant Burrito Ballad

I woke up today and decided, “Damnit Steve, it’s time to finally write that article about burritos and existential crises.”

If that first sentence is making you go, “Steve has stepped off the deep end,” then just keep reading.

I promise you, it’s only gonna get weirder from here on out.

I’m hoping you’ve had the privilege of watching comedian Bo Burnham’s 2021 Netflix special, INSIDE. If you haven’t, drop what you’re doing and go spend the next 75 minutes doing so.

I’ll wait.

Burnham’s INSIDE is receiving universal praise from critics and the general public. It’s one of the most enjoyable, empowering, depressing, creative, thought-provoking, and somehow encouraging pieces of experimental art I’ve seen in a long time.

Of course, I’d expect nothing less from the man.

Bo has been putting out thought provoking comedy for a over a decade (wild considering his age), and I’ll admit that I largely avoided him until about 2016.

I had made the false assumption that Bo was a one-trick pony who wrote gross but clever lyrics.

Luckily, a few years back I stumbled across a clip from his previous 2016 special, Make Happy.

Today, because this is my sandbox and I’ll do what I want…

I wanted to spend a ridiculous amount of time breaking down the final song from this special, the “Kanye Rant.”

It’s a satirical takedown of Kanye West’s lengthy, auto-tuned Yezus tour diatribes.

If you watched and loved INSIDE, but thought to yourself, “Damn dude that was DARK…”

Then it’s time to rewatch this Kanye rant. Bo’s depth has been here all along, and even hiding in plain site.

Burnham’s document internal struggles started long before INSIDE, and him sharing this openly started 5+ years back.

To the Kanye rant!

The Best 7 Minutes of Your Day

Please set aside 7 minutes right now, and watch this Kanye rant.

Then allow me to break it down, line by line, because this is apparently how I’m choosing to spend my morning.

Irony Can be so Painful

After singing about a first world problem that Pringle cans are too narrow to fit one’s hand in the can, he drops a line that nearly everybody can relate to:

“I don’t go to the gym, because I’m self conscious about my body.

But I’m self-conscious about my body because I don’t go to the gym. Irony can be so painful.

That’s a catch-22!”

This doesn’t require much analysis, other than it’s immediately relatable. It applies to the gym, but it also applies to most of the things we want:

  • People are afraid to exercise because of how they look, and they’re unhappy with how they look because they don’t exercise.
  • I don’t write much because I don’t have much to say. But I don’t have much to say because I don’t write.
  • I don’t play music because I’m not very good at it. But I’m not very good at music because I don’t play.

Damn you, irony. You beautiful bastard.

Of course, this quick aside was just the appetizer for the true main course of Burnham’s brilliant ballad:

Chipotle.

The Burrito is a Metaphor

Bo recaps ordering a burrito, where everything behind the glass looks AMAZING! He gets every ingredient and ends up with a fully loaded burrito.

And as for anybody who’s ever eaten at Chipotle, we know what happens next.

At the end of the line, the dude wrapping the burrito can’t fit it all inside the confines of the tortilla. It’s a burrito disaster!

Dude you should have warned me.

You’re the burrito expert, you should have told me halfway through, ‘Hey man, you might be reaching maximum burrito capacity here.’

Do you think I want a messy burrito? No one wants a messy burrito!

Do you see what’s going on here?

This burrito is an overstuffed metaphor for fame.

And it’s brilliant.

“I wouldn’t have got HALF this shit if I knew it wouldn’t fit.

I wouldn’t have got the lettuce if I knew it wouldn’t fit. I wouldn’t have got the cheese if I knew it wouldn’t fit.”

Burnham is sharing his cautionary tale – he hit fame at a VERY early age (before he could legally drink), and found himself standing shoulder to shoulder, and getting respect and accolades, from some of the most well respected comedians in the business.

Guys who grinded out dingy comedy clubs for decades before finding their footing. Guys who probably WANTED to hate Bo for his almost overnight success, until they discovered the thoughtfulness and self-deprecation with which Bo handles himself.

In other words – his success was earned, not given.

So imagine you’re Bo. You’re making YouTube videos in your bedroom and just a few years later find yourself sitting next to Gary Shandling, Ray Romano, Judd Apatow, and Mark Maron, and earning their respect:

And that’s how this introverted, shy, deeply introspective nerd finds himself on stage in front of thousands, has already earned the respect of his heroes, and gets to perform his own art for a captive audience on a nightly basis.

And it crushed him.

The story of the burrito here is a warning for those that can heed the message:

“Sure all of this fame LOOKS good, but once you have it you’ll realize you don’t ACTUALLY want it.

I’m telling you now, from experience. I was lucky enough to reach the peak and it’s not as great as you’d think. If I could, I would give back most of it!”

In other words, filling up one’s life with all sorts of stuff that doesn’t actually fit makes for a bad burrito experience.

Once we finish with our burrito metaphor, Bo goes “full send” on his struggles with creativity, fame, and happiness.

Part of Me Loves You. Part of Me Hates You.

I could sit up here and pretend like my biggest problems are Pringle cans, and burritos, but my biggest problem is you.

I want to please you, but I want to stay true to myself. I want to give you the night out that you deserve, but I wanna say what I think, and not care what you think about it.

Part of me loves you. Part of me hates you.

Part of me needs you. Part of me fears you.

And I don’t think that I can handle this right now.”

Bo’s trying to share his love-hate relationship with fame and an audience and the anxiety that comes with putting art out into the world or performing it on stage.

He wants to create, and make stuff, and share.

But goddamnit, he hates that he desires the approval of fans when he makes this stuff. And yet, he needs his art to be true to himself, without depending on what the audience thinks.

Of course, without fans – who could he make these things for? Author Mark Manson shared a quote from Will Smith that fits perfectly here:

I’m world-class at only a couple of things. And every hour I’m not doing those things, I am doing a disservice to myself and the world.

That’s the rub.

You can choose to NOT create, or share. Of course, you might be doing the world a disservice by not putting your art out into the world.

And author Seth Godin said it even more succinctly : “Be criticized, or be ignored.”

Making art is hard. Sharing art and baring your soul is hard. It can feel easier to NOT share, but then you are depriving the planet of art!

I imagine Bo went to some VERY dark places during the filming and editing of INSIDE, and probably oscillated between “this is hot garbage, I will never set this see the light of day” and “this is hot garbage, but fuck it, I’m just gonna ship it.”

And the world is a better place as a result of him creating this art. Millions of people have watched INSIDE, like myself, and saying “Wow, I thought I was the only one who felt this way! I feel heard.”

Then Shit gets DARK

“Look at them they’re just staring at me. Like, come and watch the skinny kid with the steadily declining mental health, and laugh as he attempts to give you what he cannot give himself.”

That’s some darkness right there, wrapped up in an auto-tuned satirical rant.

Burnham struggles immensely with his own self image, desperately wants to make others happy, and yet gets stuck inside his own head and struggles with happiness, anxiety, and depression himself.

He has discussed his struggles with anxiety on numerous podcasts:

We all know the tragedies that often befall the people who entertain us the most.

From Prince to Robin Williams, Elvis to Heath Ledger…being a human is fucking brutal sometimes. We’re emotional bags of meat on a floating rock and often trying to find meaning where none might exist.

I recently spoke with a friend who wrote a very successful book – so successful that essentially he never really has to work ever again if he doesn’t want to.

In other words, he achieved the goal that most authors hope for: to be paid well enough for one’s writing that they can then only write for the fun of it.

Which introduced a WHOLE new set of problems.

“Do you know how much of a mindfuck it is to reach ALL of your life’s goals within a week?”

n fact, as we come to learn in INSIDE, his mental health declined so furiously that after multiple on-stage panic attacks during performances, he took 5 YEARS off of performing to get better.

Taking “Kanye Rant” and INSIDE as a single package, the audience gets to learn an amazing lesson – if we’re smart enough to listen:

We get the cautionary tale without the tragedy of an overdose or suicide.

We get the knowledge without the shock of another dead celebrity.

This is a gift.

Let’s move onto the conclusion.

Back from the Brink.

“I put on a silly show, I should probably just shut up and do my job so here I go.”

This is Bo pulling himself back from the brink. “Sorry for getting so introspective there. You’re here for entertainment, not depressing self-loathing, so let me dance like a monkey for you.”

“You can tell them anything if you just make it funny, make it rhyme. And if they still don’t understand you, then just run it one more time.”

In other words – “Who knows if people even understand the message I’m trying to make here. But who cares. I’ll just make it funny and catchy and hope you eventually catch on.”

Thank you. Goodnight. I hope you’re happy.

In the end, that’s all we really want right? To be able to say “Here I made this. I did my craft well, and I hope you enjoyed it.”

Feels weird to dedicate a post to a 30 year old dude wrapping about Burritos, but damn when you create art this clever, it’s worth the analysis. Or maybe it wasn’t.

Part of me doesn’t care what you think about this analysis. Maybe Bo was really just talking about burritos.

Of course, the other part of me DEEPLY cares what you think about this analysis.

But that doesn’t matter. I wanted to write this. I lost track of time while doing so, and I feel like I did my brain justice in putting this out into the world.

So, thanks for reading.

I hope you’re happy.

Get Back to What Got You There.

I’ve been trying to work myself out of creative debt for the past 18 months.

Creative debt occurs when somebody spends more time consuming other people’s creative endeavors than creating their own content:

  • Reading more books about writing, instead of writing another book.
  • Watching more TV rather than creating more video content, etc.
  • Listening to myriad podcasts instead of finally starting one.
  • Spending time at museums looking for more inspiration, rather than picking up a paintbrush and making bad art.

So, as I’ve been working my way out of creative debt, I’ve found comedians talking about their comedy process to be some of the most helpful stories to draw inspiration from.

As an example, I was IMMEDIATELY drawn to a passage in Jerry Seinfeld’s recent book, Is This Anything?:

For about two years after I finished [Seinfeld] I didn’t do anything. I moved my life back to New York. I had breakfast with Colin Quinn everyday. I played pool at Amsterdam Billiards at night. Very late sometimes. I met and married my wonderful wife, Jessica.

But no stand-up. No writing. Nothing.

Felt lost. And wanted to.

In LA, two of my comedy pals, Chris Rock and Mario Joyner, were doing a show at the Universal Amphitheater and I went to see them. The amphitheater is a big house, about six thousand seats. I sat there watching these two smooth, confident professionals handle that room and that crowd so easily.

I laughed and enjoyed that show so much. And then I thought, “What an amazing talent and skill set that is to witness. What a great time we’re having in this audience. How are they able to do that?!”

Here’s one of the funniest, most successful comedians on the planet, watching other comedians working on their craft, and thinking, “How are those comedians able to do what they do on stage?”

Again, this is JERRY effin’ SEINFELD!

A killer stand-up comedian and creator of arguably the best and most successful show ever…struggling to figure out how to get back to creating comedy.

I found myself in a similar position for the past two years.

My company, Nerd Fitness, started as a fun blog where I had to keep my own attention by writing funny content about health and fitness. Most of my time was spent writing and building, because that’s what paid the bills.

Since then, Nerd Fitness has evolved into a company with 45 employees, systems, processes, and an engine. I drifted more into a CEO role and away from a creator role. More spreadsheets and meetings, more growth and forecasting, more analysis and less “messy, creative process.”

As a result, trying to create ANYTHING started to feel daunting, and almost all of my creative ideas never left the port:

  • I couldn’t write a follow up book to Level Up Your Life until I had the PERFECT sequel idea. I currently have 7 half-finished book proposals.
  • I couldn’t write articles that didn’t fit the search engine optimization strategies that fit Nerd Fitness’s business plan.
  • I couldn’t started a new project unless it aligned with the greater vision that was Nerd Fitness.

And then I attended a writers retreat with some of my longtime internet friends.

These are writers who specifically chose to build their careers around their writing and their creative process. These are ALSO authors who have sold millions and millions of copies of their books, and crafted their businesses around their strengths and skillsets.

At that retreat, as we swapped stories and struggles about writing and business and life, I couldn’t help but feel like Seinfeld admiring Chris Rock from the crowd: “Man, my writer friends are really good at what they do, and they seem really happy too. How did they do that?”

And then the answer came to me, just as the answer came to Seinfeld as he thought about his Comedian friends:

I thought, “I want to do that. I want to be like them.”

Then, “Wait a minute! That’s what I used to be! I used to know how to do everything they are doing. I still want to be that.”

[Chris and I were] having dinner at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. I explain my situation. Chris says, “Well, at least you know there’s only one way to do it.”

It did feel great to be reminded of that.

I didn’t have to waste one second of time wondering how to approach the problem. I don’t use writers.

So, it’s back to tiny clubs with flimsy stuff, night after night, month after month. And it takes however long it takes.

When you see a comedian with a ton of great stuff, what you’re really marveling at, or should be, is “How could someone crawl on their belly that great a distance?”

My work here on SteveKamb.com is my attempt at building a little sandbox, and working on ways to get out of creative debt.

To create stuff just for the hell of it.

To write about what interests me.

To “chop wood and carry water,” and create because that’s what I’m on this planet to do.

In addition to occasional articles here, I’m publishing every single day over on Nerd Fitness’s Instagram and sharing regularly on Twitter @SteveKamb, which has turned out to be pretty darn fun.

So, this is me – getting back to what got me here in the first place.

Crawling on my belly for as long as it takes.

(Typed on my belly, at the start of a journey whose conclusion is unknown.)

2020: A Retrospective

“Build a life you don’t need to escape from.” – Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

Looking back, 2020 was a dumpster fire in many aspects.

From being cooped up indoors for months and not being able to visit friends and family, to the absolute uncertainty of “What does this mean for  my family? My business? My life?” the year couldn’t have been more bizarre and frustrating.

2020 also happened to be a year of incredible growth, change, and leveling up. 

This is my first attempt at a “year in review,” which I found to be both cathartic and informative.

Without taking this step back and looking at the year as a whole, I would have told you “not much happened in 2020, it was pretty boring.”

Which is a big fat lie, as I did a lot of shit in 2020! 

  • 2020 began in a rented townhouse in Hoboken, NJ.
  • 2020 ended in a 1940’s home I own on an acre of land in Nashville, TN.
  • For the first time in 5 years, I own a car. 
  • I’ve gone from Peter Pan to Bob Villa.
  • My company, Nerd Fitness, has doubled in size.
  • The number of dogs in my family have doubled.

Here’s how it went down.

2020: COVID CHANGED EVERYTHING

Back in January 2020, My finceée Alex and I were living in a townhouse Hoboken, NJ, with a lease that ended in April. 

After a few years in Manhattan, and one year across the river in Hoboken, we were both interested in shaking things up and getting away from the chaos that is NYC. 

I had spent most of 2019 reevaluating what was important to me:

  • I didn’t NEED to be in or near Manhattan anymore.
  • Instead of trying to scale Nerd Fitness as quickly as possible, I shifted my focus to creating a great daily schedule. 
  • I wanted to live in a place where I could do good work and take on projects that were interesting to me.

My life shifted from an aspirational “need to get this done ASAP” goals to simply, “how do I make today better?” 

I used this quote from author Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key, “Build a life you don’t need to escape from,” as my guiding principle. 

Alex’s parents were moving out of the NYC area, and our ties to NYC had weakened. We were both interested in a few things: a home we could own, a big yard for our dog and for entertaining, and a quieter life focused on the right things. 

We both love Nashville – and I’ve lived here twice before – so we flew down in February and found a house to rent in the Belmont area, and scheduled our move for early April. 

Then Covid hit.

We hunkered down in Hoboken, waiting out the weeks until we could move to Nashville. We managed to get out just in the nick of time before everything got locked down completely. We made the drive in one day, and suddenly we found ourselves in a great house with a huge backyard!

Once the dust settled, we realized Covid wasn’t going to be a few weeks of disruption, but rather MONTHS, it was obvious that we weren’t going to be able to get married as planned in December.

We made the tough decision to postpone our wedding by a full year. This was initially frustrating and sad, but looking back it was the most obvious decision we could have made. 

After decorating our rented home, Alex grew frustrated with putting time and energy into a house that wasn’t ours, and building a garden in a backyard that we were renting.

So, after just two months into our lease, we decided to begin a search to buy a home for ourselves. We figured if we couldn’t travel, and we couldn’t get married yet, then we could at least start the rest of our life and make a more permanent home.

We had been aggressively saving for a house downpayment for years prior, so advancing this timetable didn’t stretch us too thin.

We also figured Nashville was only going to become more popular: no state income tax, relatively low cost of living, covid, and a burgeoning entrepreneurship/tech scene meant that people were flocking here in droves.

Apple Music, Google Music, and Amazon were all building large presences here, which boded well for future property value.

We started the search for a home and found one that checked 9 out of 10 boxes for both of us.

And thus, after spending the previous 18 years moving 18 times…Steve Kamb became a homeowner!

2020 HOME OWNERSHIP

We managed to find a house on nearly an acre of land, within walking distance of the amazing coffee shops, stores, and parks of 12 South.

It also had everything else we were looking for (4+ bedrooms, a huge backyard, a basement in case of tornadoes, and in a quiet neighborhood).

We followed Ramit Sethi’s 3 rules for buying a home.

Rather than taking our income and asking “how much house can this buy?” we instead asked, “How much house do we reallllly need, and what’s important to us?” 

This is how we ended up with a good-sized home, on an acre of land, in our preferred part of town, with a monthly mortgage that’s less than half of what our rent was in Hoboken/NYC.

The house was also built in 1946, so it has plenty of…character. Ha!

Although we paid extra for additional inspections during the buying process, there were areas we absolutely should have gotten extra specialists.

Here’s what I wish we had done differently:

  • On the second day of homeownership, we discovered there was a raccoon living in the attic, which wasn’t accessible until we cut a hole in the ceiling. We paid an pest-control specialist to evict the poor thing, and also had to pay to replace alllll of the insulation in the attic as well. We should have paid to cut a hole in the ceiling to get up in there before buying.
  • In December, we paid to have the chimney cleaned and inspected before having our first fire of the season. The verdict: please do NOT put a fire in this fireplace, as the entire chimney needs to be replaced. We wouldn’t have expected the previous owners to do this, but we could have used this to negotiate our final cost down, as this is going to be costly to replace. We should have paid to get a chimney inspector out to the property during our due diligence period.  
  • The second floor air conditioner crapped out two months after we moved in. We knew it was OLD, and would have to be replaced sooner than later, but it’s a shame that it barely lasted a few months. Oh well. 

These are all things we probably could have negotiated with the owners to reduce our offer.

I don’t feel too badly – though there were multiple offers on this house within 24 hours of it hitting the market, and we knew the house was 80+ years old, so we figured that into how much we wanted to spend monthly on mortgage.

2020 HOME PROJECTS

You don’t buy an 80 year old home without expecting to make a lot of updates, right?

Alex grew up in an 200-year old home her family refurbished over 30 years, so this is nothing new for her.

Of course, I’ve spent the past 18 years in rented condos and apartments, not needing to fix a damn thing.

So, this has been an area of my life I’ve done a pretty dramatic about-face! I now try to fix most things myself, and learn what I can in the process.

Here’s what I did in my first 4 months of home ownership:

  1. I bought a hedge trimmer, trimmed the hedges, which were in desperate need of a haircut. I also ended up with so much poison ivy that I still have scars 6 months later, but I wear these scars with pride.

2. We built a chain link fence to hold us over until we put in a new fence. Digging these post holes, pouring concrete, stretching the fence, exhausting, but fulfilling. 

I fixed my office closet, patching the wall, using joint-compound, sanding down the wall, and re-setting the shelves. 

I replaced the kitchen faucet and water lines. This required 4 trips to Home Depot and two lacerated fingers, but it was worth it. No more drip!

I wall-mounted our 75-inch television, drilling pilot holes and setting lag bolts into our wood studs beneath or plaster walls.

I built a workbench, which should make future home renovation projects easier!  

Looking ahead, we have big plans for the rest of the house:

We want to renovate the kitchen, replace the windows, open up the staircase, and partially finish the basement.

We want to turn the backyard into a fun place for entertaining, add a screened in patio and deck, eventually add a pool, and more. 

2020 CAR AND TRAVEL

I haven’t been on a plane since February 2020, which is easily the longest I’ve gone without getting on a plane since I was probably 4.

Because I knew we’d be road tripping to places instead of flying for the foreseeable future, I bought a Jeep – the same type of car I’ve owned multiple times in the past.

I had no interest in haggling for the best possible price with a car dealership, especially during covid, so I used CarMax and picked out my car online. I had Alex drive me over to the CarMax dealership, where I test drove my car for about 15 minutes, then made the purchase. 

It was nice to just pick what I wanted, see the price, and then buy the car.

Despite not going on any planes, Alex and I still did two major trips:

We drove from Nashville to Phoenix with our pup to visit her parents for 2 weeks in October. We drove through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and finally Arizona.

While out in Arizona, I managed to play 6 rounds of golf.

We also drove up to Cape Cod to visit my parents for Thanksgiving, going up through Virgina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, NY, Connecticut, Providence and Massachusetts.

Luckily, our pup Pepper was an absolute champ in the car during this whole trip. 

The roadtrips were a bit stressful, but ultimately good quality time with Alex and myself. 

2020: DOUBLE DOGS

We adopted a second dog!

Our older pup Pepper loves dogs. When we lived in Hoboken, we lived 5 minutes from a dog park, so we could walk over there every day. Pepper was a dog park favorite, as she would be so excited to play and have fun with each and every dog. 

Now that we’re in quarantine, and in Nashville, Pepper doesn’t get to spend nearly as much time playing with other dogs. So we adopted a second one.

Her name is Olive.

She’s adorable. But also, a handful.

2020 HEALTH AND FITNESS

I’ve been going to the gym 4 days a week, every week, for the past 15 years.

Covid wrecked this plan…initially.

For the few weeks before we moved out of Hoboken, I was doing home workouts exclusively with bodyweight a door frame pull-up bar.

As soon as I moved to Nashville, my friend Tyler Thompson (owner of Title Boxing Nashville) dropped off a barbell and some weights for me to use while I was getting settled. 

I also immediately ordered a squat rack and my own barbell and plates. I got this squat rack from Rogue, and I got the weights and bar from FringeSport. They showed up a few months later. 

Once I hung up my gymnastic rings, I suddenly had a full blown gym! 

I have missed more than my fair share of workouts this year, but I’ve got my nutrition dialed in so I’m still around 9-10% body fat at 170ish pounds.

Oh, I started playing golf seriously again. I played golf in high school, but living in manhattan and playing regular golf isn’t very easy. 

Luckily, my friend Sameer here in Nashville is also is trying to play more, and golf is the perfect Covid activity. During the summer and fall, we played golf once a week or so. 

My childhood best friend Cash happens to live in Knoxville, so every other week we drove halfway between our two cities and played a round of golf. 

My best score of the year was an 81 out in Arizona. I knew I had taken my swing as far as it could go, and I was never going to shoot consistently in the 70s if I could hit my driver. 

So I’ve been taking lessons over at Gaylord Springs at the Profectus Center with Errol. I’m signed up for an ongoing monthly membership, which pretty much FORCES me to take a lesson each month. It’s worth it to me. 

2020 BUSINESS

I’m very fortunate that I’ve spent the last 11 years building a remote team and writing about home workouts. 

Once the reality of Covid set in, our business got busy. We now have a team of 45+ people, including 25 coaches and 15 full-time team members, and another 5-10 part-time people.  

We also launched a new habit building app, NF Journey. The response to this app has been overwhelmingly positive, and I’m excited to see how people respond to it. 

I spent a lot of 2020 handing off other parts of my role to more capable team members, which freed me up to focus on the app and so on.

I also spent quite a bit of time cleaning up all of the management /tech /financial /entrepreneurial debt I had accumulated over the past decade

Now that I have a proper home office, I finally got a good minimalist desk setup going:

Nerd Fitness also got its first corporate client! It’s a company I’ve loved since I was a child, and a key member of that company happened to be an online coaching client of ours. He loved our Journey app so much that they bought 250 slots for his team members.  

2020 FINANCE AND CHARITY

I am a nerd for personal finance. I track my net worth in a google document on a monthly basis, and I have 25 different automated savings accounts for various emergencies, contingencies, or upcoming projects I want to tackle.

Outside of saving more, I’ve been working on GIVING more.

Heavily inspired this year by my friend Ramit, I made a $10,000 donation to the ACLU, and made monthly ongoing donations to Propublica (investigative journalism) and Effective Altruism. 

I made donations to other causes and services that were important to me: friends who had lost their jobs due to Covid, others who lost family members due to cancer, and pretty much anybody else I knew doing an activity for any charitable reason 

This is an area I want to level up even more in 2021. I’m glad I’ve set up automated donations to ProPublica and Effective Altruism, as I no longer have to think about it…so I’d like to think of more ways I can donate my time and money to worthwhile causes!

I’m also very excited – once the world opens up again – to find local organizations here in Nashville that I can make an impact with!

2020 CREATIVE PROJECTS

I finally got off my ass and started writing here at SteveKamb.com – I’ve been threatening to do this for 5+ years and finally gave myself permission to start. 

I heard Seth Godin in a recent interview on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. “Flip the question: What would you do if you KNEW it would fail?” 

For me, it’s writing. 

I spent the past decade exclusively writing about personal development, strength training, nutrition, and wellness, which is how I built Nerd Fitness to 1 million+ readers a month. 

This site is going to be my sandbox for just writing and trying out new stuff.

I only published 4 posts on the site in 2020, but it’s a start. My goal is to continue publishing creative work, and see where my brain takes me.

I don’t write when I have a good idea, I write to find a good idea.

I’m still dabbling with Piano, Guitar, and Violin – but it’s mostly keeping my current subpar skills where they are rather than focusing on improving them. 

2021 AND BEYOND

I’m in a place where I don’t feel compelled to set audacious goals for myself or my business.

Instead of trying to set a goal and being dissatisfied until I get there, instead I’m inverting things. 

I want to work on improving my day-to-day life: chop wood, carry water.

I still spend too much time sitting at my computer out of habit, and have tried to put steps in place to really time-box myself and get away from my computer when I’m done. 

So I’ve gone old school: I keep an actual hourglass on my desk, and try to accumulate as many 30-minute focused sessions as possible each day, and tracking this on a physical wall calendar.

I’m rereading Essentialism, Effective Executive, and other books on the creative process to remind me to cut out the noise and focus on the most important work you can do each day.

I know that if I’m spending a few hours each day on the most important task, Nerd Fitness is going to be in a good place, and I’m going to be a good place.

Chop wood, carry water.

Close out all programs, flip the hour glass, and start typing.

Let’s see what 2021 brings…

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Avoid Creative Debt

I think about debt quite a bit.

Mostly, that I try to avoid it.

These days, we have a team over at Nerd Fitness that is approaching 50 employees and contractors.

As the company has grown and evolved, I’ve found my attention and time pulled in many direction: meetings, projects, a new app, mentorship of team members, and so on.

My fiancée and I also just purchased an 80-year house in Nashville, and we adopted a second dog, Olive (pictured here with our other rescue pup, Pepper):

Oh, and there’s no shortage of amazing TV shows and video games to play, especially when trapped inside during the apocalypse.

Over the past two years, I’ve slipped more and more into the most unfulfilling and insidious type of debt:

Creative debt.

I’ve been spending a lot of time consuming other people’s creative works.

From playing through the Dark Souls series on Playstation, to reading Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, to watching Queen’s Gambit on Netflix twice, I’ve been absorbing a LOT of other people’s amazing creative content, and not producing very much of my own.

Simply put, it hasn’t been a priority, because I’ve left the rest of life happen to me rather than making time for it.

Which is a shame, because I LOVE making stuff.

My youth was spent building LEGO sets, tree forts, pillow forts, cardboard box forts, and everything other type of fort imaginable.

I started playing piano when I was 9, I picked up the guitar in college, and started playing the fiddle at age 30.

I’ve publish 700 2000+ word articles over on NerdFitness.com, which is how that site now receives a million+ monthly readers.

I even wrote an actual book, Level Up Your Life, which has helped people all over the world live better.

I’m sharing all of this to paint the picture of who I am: somebody who creates. I’m not particularly good at music, nor do I think I’m a particularly great writer.

I do know that creating stuff makes me happy and fulfilled.

And because I had spent too much time consuming other people’s creative work and not shipping any of my own, I found myself unhappy and unfulfilled.

Once I came to this realization, how do you think I tried getting out of creative debt?

I did exactly what we all THINK we should do.

I read articles and devoured books and listed to podcasts to get motived and inspired to create again.

Here are some of my favorites:

I kept reading more and more works from other, more creative people than myself about being creative, trying to find the motivation to write another book or begin another big project.

These incredible resources were wasted on me – I used them as a crutch rather than a springboard.

I kept psyching myself out:

I told myself I needed a BIG idea that was worthy of my time; an idea that I could dedicate weeks and months of my life to. The bigger I tried to think, the more pressure I put on myself, and the more I scared myself out of starting.

Even worse, the more creative work I read from other people, the more I told myself “your work has to be at least as good as this – otherwise, don’t bother.”

I accumulated more and more creative debt, waiting for inspiration to strike.

(In South Park terms, I was collecting creative underpants).

All of this came to a head in 2020 when I declared a creative debt emergency.

I faced the cold hard truth: I couldn’t inspire myself out of debt. I couldn’t motivate myself out of debt.

The only way out was to just f***ing START creating.

My Plan to Get out of Creative Debt

I have a very specific plan to get out of creative debt:

Not with micro-dosing LSD or going on a vision quest or cutting my ear off, but with boring consistency.

Boring consistency got me in the best shape of my life.

Boring consistency is the only reason I was able to write Level Up Your Life and grow Nerd Fitness.

Boring consistency is going to get me out of creative debt too.

Every morning, whether or not I’m inspired, I create.

I’ve blocked off the 30 minutes of every day in my calendar. I use Focus to block time-distracting websites. I can’t check my email or do anything else until my 30 minutes of creating are up.

I have a Spotify focus playlist of a few songs that help get me in flow.

And I’m creating crappy work. Some days are easy, while other days it feels like playing basketball in quicksand.

(Terrible idea, I might add)

Most of the stuff I’m creating is hot garbage. Almost all of it will never see the light of day. But every once and a while, I stumble across a thought or idea that becomes eventually becomes pretty cool.

And my only goal, each day, is to not break the streak.

I no longer write when I have a good idea.

I’m write until I find one.

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