06-23-26 Raw & UnCut Funnybone & Purple Quarters
I haven’t written here in a while.
Not because nothing happened.
Because too much happened.
That’s usually how it goes with me.
When life is quiet, I can write about it.
When life is loud, I have to live through it first.
Tonight I’m sitting outside at Westport Plaza, smoking, trying to enjoy the evening, and realizing something I don’t love admitting.
It is getting harder and harder to just be myself out in the world.
I don’t know what it is.
Maybe I’m attracting strange energy lately.
Maybe I always attracted strange energy.
Maybe I’m just finally healthy enough to notice it.
That’s probably closer to the truth.
I have had to create boundaries lately like I have never had to create before.
I have walked away from situations.
I have walked away from people.
I have walked away from conversations before they turned into something I had to recover from.
I have walked away from potential relationships.
I have walked away from things that maybe could have been great.
And I’m sitting here tonight understanding the weight of that.
Because walking away sounds easy when people post about it online.
“Protect your peace.”
“Choose yourself.”
“Cut off toxic energy.”
That all sounds cute on a meme.
But in real life, protecting your peace sometimes feels like grief.
Because sometimes you are not walking away from something obviously bad.
Sometimes you are walking away from potential.
Sometimes you are walking away from chemistry.
Sometimes you are walking away from a version of life that might have been fun for a while.
Sometimes you are walking away from someone you genuinely like.
And that is where it gets tricky.
Because the old me would have let all of that in.
The old me would have confused intensity with intimacy.
The old me would have confused access with acceptance.
The old me would have let negative energy sit at my table just so I didn’t have to sit there alone.
And that is a hard thing to admit.
But it is true.
I used to let people into my life who did not deserve my energy.
What I mean when I say that:
“I am not saying those people had no value. I am saying not everyone is entitled to the most sacred parts of me. I can honor someone’s humanity without handing them the keys to my nervous system.”
That took me way too long to learn.
I thought it was mean to not accept somebody fully if they wanted to be accepted.
I thought love meant full access.
I thought kindness meant letting people all the way in.
I thought if somebody showed up in my life, there must be a reason they were there.
And maybe there was.
Maybe the reason was to teach me discernment.
Because men are born, and nobody tells us what the fuck is going on.
Maybe somebody told me.
Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.
Maybe they tried and I didn’t understand.
Maybe I had to learn it the hard way, like I learn most things.
But I know this now:
Acceptance and access are not the same thing.
I can accept you.
I can love you.
I can wish good things for you.
I can see the God in you, the humanity in you, the wounded kid in you, the potential in you.
And I can still not let you near my peace.
That is new for me.
That is grown-man shit.
And I am not always good at it.
But I am getting better.
Ahren from The Balanced Man talks about relationships in a way that has been sitting with me.
I’m probably going to butcher how he says it, but the meaning is mutuality.
Giving and receiving.
Not keeping score.
Not performing.
Not chasing.
Not trying to win someone over by abandoning yourself.
Just mutual investment.
A relationship where both people are willing to show up.
That sounds simple.
It is not simple.
At least not for me.
Because I have a tendency to move fast.
In relationships.
In ideas.
In business.
In comedy.
In life.
If I see the vision, I want to run.
If I feel the spark, I want to build the fire.
But lately I have been practicing not doing that.
I have been practicing letting things breathe.
I have been practicing not sprinting into every connection just because it feels alive.
And what I am noticing is that other people have expectations too.
Other people have needs.
Other people have wounds.
Other people have timelines.
Other people have chaos.
And sometimes their chaos wants to dance with my chaos.
And my chaos is retired.
Mostly.
Some people’s energy is dirty.
I don’t like it.
What I mean when I say that:
“I am not calling the person dirty. I am saying my body knows when something feels off. My nervous system knows when a room, a person, or a situation is pulling me out of myself. I used to ignore that signal. Now I am trying to respect it.”
That is what happened tonight.
I had a pretty good day at work.
Got some things accomplished.
Fucked some things up.
Moved forward anyway.
That’s business.
That’s life.
That’s being me.
Then I remembered it was Tuesday, which means comedy night.
I knew I was going up at Funny Bone because this was my fourth week back.
I told myself when I got back from Australia that I was going to start hitting Funny Bone again.
I had not been going much this year because I had been traveling so much, and I didn’t want to commit to something I could not consistently show up for.
Before that, I had mostly been doing Purple Quarters on Tuesday nights.
But now I am back in town.
And I need the reps.
I have a pretty solid ten minutes now.
I can do that ten almost any time.
But that means it is time to stretch.
It is time to start building the twenty.
That is the next mountain.
So I went to Funny Bone.
I was up seventeenth.
Good night.
Not a great crowd.
A good crowd.
Maybe twenty-five people.
Maybe ten.
Who cares?
A crowd is a crowd if they are sitting there listening.
And they were listening.
I hit my stuff.
Got good laughs.
Landed the punchlines.
Felt the timing.
I am starting to understand movement on stage a little better.
Not just wandering.
Not just pacing because my body is full of electricity.
Actual movement.
Movement with purpose.
Movement that helps the punchline.
Movement that lets the joke breathe.
I can feel that part coming together.
And that feels good.
Then I headed to Purple Quarters.
And when I got there, there was a person in the room whose energy does not really work with mine right now.
I do not dislike this person.
I do not hate this person.
I don’t hate anybody.
But I felt it.
The room changed for me.
Or maybe I changed in the room.
Either way, I got off center.
I could feel myself struggling to hold frame.
And that is the part people do not always understand.
When you are working on yourself, it does not mean you never get thrown off.
It means you notice faster.
It means you recover faster.
It means you do not have to burn the whole night down just because your nervous system caught a spark.
The old me may have let that energy own the night.
The old me may have spiraled.
The old me may have needed attention.
The old me may have turned discomfort into a story, and then turned the story into a mess.
But tonight I got myself together.
The person left.
I went up.
And I crushed.
I did a really good fucking job.
Not perfect.
But good.
Alive.
Present.
Funny.
I even found a new premise at the end.
Something about Millennials helicopter-parenting their kids so hard that now they are having babies for them because their grown kids aren’t having kids anymore.
That one is not done.
Not even close.
But there is something there.
There is a rant in it.
There is a generational thing in it.
There is a stupid, ridiculous, true-enough-to-be-funny thing in it.
And I found it live.
That is one of the reasons I love comedy.
You can write all you want.
You can think all you want.
But sometimes the joke does not exist until your feet are on the stage and your mouth gets brave enough to say the thing your brain was trying to hide.
Comedy is weird like that.
Life is weird like that too.
So now I’m here.
Outside.
Westport.
Beautiful weather.
Thinking about last fall when this was how I was writing.
Sitting outside.
Letting the night settle down.
Letting the thoughts come through.
Remembering how comforting that was.
How therapeutic it was.
And realizing I need to come back to it.
Because I have not written here in months.
I finished the book.
I kept doing comedy.
I went to Australia.
I came back.
I kept building.
I kept moving.
But I stopped sitting down and bleeding on the page.
And I think I need that.
Not because the world needs every thought I have.
God help us all if that were true.
But because I need a place where I can tell the truth before it gets too polished.
That is what CoxOut is supposed to be.
Raw.
Uncut.
Not reckless.
But honest.
And honestly, I think this whole night is about one thing:
My peace has a job now.
That is the part I did not understand before.
Peace is not just a vibe.
Peace is not just sitting in a quiet room with incense and pretending you are not pissed off.
Peace is not being passive.
Peace is not being weak.
Peace is not hiding from the world.
Peace is fuel.
Peace is infrastructure.
Peace is the condition I need to be in so I can do what I am here to do.
I need peace to be a father.
I need peace to coach.
I need peace to build companies.
I need peace to write.
I need peace to get on stage and be funny.
I need peace to keep my sobriety strong.
I need peace to tell the truth without turning it into a weapon.
And I need peace because the work I care about is getting bigger.
Which brings me to AI.
Because somehow this whole strange night brings me back to AI.
If you follow my story, you already know technology has always mattered to me.
Technology has been my savior in a lot of ways.
Maybe that sounds dramatic.
I don’t care.
It is true.
Technology was my liaison between me and the system.
And when I say “the system,” I mean all of it.
Schools.
Governments.
Forms.
Institutions.
Businesses.
Rules.
Processes.
The strange human machinery that runs the world and expects everyone to understand the instructions.
I did not understand the instructions.
Not naturally.
Not easily.
Not without a fight.
Computers gave me a bridge.
Computers let me communicate with systems that did not know how to communicate with me.
Without computers, I do not know where I would be.
Maybe I would have figured it out.
Maybe not.
But I know they gave me a path.
They gave me a language.
They gave me leverage.
They gave me a way to turn what was happening in my mind into something the outside world could actually use.
So when AI showed up the way it showed up, it did not feel like a toy to me.
It felt familiar.
It felt like the next bridge.
I have been using AI longer than most people knew it existed.
But when the emerging capability hit — when GPT-3.5 and everything after it showed what this new layer could really do — I knew instantly this was different.
This was not just another app.
This was not just better software.
This was a new way to use computers.
A new way to communicate.
A new way to collapse the distance between thought and output.
And yes, I saw the scary parts.
I still see the scary parts.
I understand why people are afraid.
I understand why people are confused.
I understand why some people want to pretend this is just another tech trend that will pass.
But I do not believe that.
I believe this is going to change everything.
And I believe, deep down, that humanity is going to find something beautiful in it.
Not without pain.
Not without stupidity.
Not without people abusing it, misunderstanding it, overhyping it, underestimating it, and trying to turn it into another casino.
That will happen too.
Humans are humans.
We can turn anything into a casino.
But underneath all of that, I believe AI matters because it can become an interface.
And interfaces matter.
Especially to people whose minds do not fit cleanly into the world as it currently exists.
Autism is close to me.
My son is nonverbal and diagnosed with autism.
I have been diagnosed with autism.
Whether people believe that or not, whether they understand that or not, whether I look like their idea of autism or not, I do not really care.
Doctors have told me my brain works differently.
I believe them.
I have lived inside this brain long enough to know something is different in here.
And I do not believe autism is simply a disability.
I believe autism is a different ability.
But I also understand why it becomes disabling inside systems that were not built for it.
What I mean when I say that:
“I am not denying the real challenges autistic people and families face. I live close to those challenges. I am saying the person is not the problem. The problem is often the interface between that person and a world that only knows one narrow way to communicate, behave, learn, and belong.”
That is where I think AI can help.
I wholeheartedly believe we are very, very close to having technology that can help unlock more of the different abilities inside autistic people.
Not unlock like they are a puzzle box.
Not unlock like there is some magic cure.
I do not want to cure people into being normal.
Normal is overrated.
Normal has caused a lot of damage.
I am talking about communication.
Expression.
Translation.
Understanding.
Tools that help someone show the world what is already happening inside them.
Tools that help the rest of us stop being so arrogant about what intelligence is supposed to look like.
Because that is one of the great sins of our society.
We assume intelligence has to arrive in a format we recognize.
Good eye contact.
Clean speech.
Fast answers.
Still body.
Nice handwriting.
Proper tone.
A normal classroom.
A normal job.
A normal conversation.
A normal life.
But what if some of the most important perception on this planet is trapped behind bad interfaces?
What if there are people who understand patterns we cannot see?
What if there are people who feel the world with a level of sensitivity the rest of us had to numb out just to survive?
What if there are people who are not broken at all?
What if we just never built the right bridge?
That is why AI matters to me.
Not because it can write your emails faster.
Although it can.
Not because it can make a logo.
Although it can.
Not because it can save a few hours at work.
Although it absolutely can.
AI matters because it may help humans understand other humans we have been failing to understand for a very long time.
Especially nonverbal people.
Especially autistic people.
Especially people with different nervous systems.
Especially people who have been labeled difficult, disabled, unreachable, strange, too much, not enough, or impossible.
I think we are getting close to tools that can help us communicate across those gaps.
Language tools.
Pattern tools.
Sensory tools.
Rhythm tools.
Visual tools.
Voice tools.
Tools we do not even have names for yet.
And yes, maybe even frequency-based tools one day.
I know that sounds crazy.
A lot of true things sound crazy right before they become obvious.
But let me soften that before somebody runs off and thinks I’m making some medical claim.
What I mean when I say that:
“I am not saying AI is a cure for autism. I am not saying technology replaces doctors, therapists, parents, teachers, or human care. I am saying better tools create better possibilities. And I believe we are moving toward a future where different nervous systems can be supported with more precision, more dignity, and less force.”
Less force matters.
Because so much of what we call help is really just force dressed up as support.
Sit still.
Look at me.
Talk like this.
Learn like this.
Calm down like this.
Act normal.
Be normal.
Make us comfortable.
What if the next era is not about forcing people to become normal?
What if the next era is about building better interfaces so people can finally be understood?
That is the line I cannot get away from tonight.
The disability is not always inside the person.
Sometimes the disability is inside the interface.
And if that is true, then AI is not just a business opportunity.
It is not just a productivity tool.
It is not just the next gold rush.
It is a bridge.
And I know what bridges can do.
Because technology was a bridge for me.
Comedy is a bridge for me.
Writing is a bridge for me.
Boxing is a bridge for me.
Sobriety became a bridge back to myself.
And now I am sitting here, outside at Westport, after two good sets, thinking about strange energy and boundaries and autism and AI and my son and my brain and the future of humanity, because apparently that is what a normal Tuesday night looks like in my head.
This is why I have to protect my peace.
Not because I am better than anyone.
Not because I want to shut the world out.
Not because I am trying to become some enlightened asshole sitting alone on a hill judging everybody else’s vibration.
I have to protect my peace because my energy has somewhere to go now.
My energy has work to do.
My energy has people to serve.
My energy has jokes to write.
My energy has companies to build.
My energy has a son to love.
My energy has a future to fight for.
So yes, I am walking away from things.
Yes, I am creating boundaries.
Yes, I am listening when my nervous system says no.
Yes, I am learning that I can love people without letting them disrupt the mission.
And yes, sometimes that feels lonely.
But it also feels clean.
And I would rather feel clean and lonely than surrounded and lost.
That might be the lesson tonight.
Protect the peace.
Build the bridge.
Do the set.
Write the truth.
Love people.
But stop handing everybody a backstage pass to your soul.
I love you all.
