Factory Reset.

A new appreciation for South Georgia, a few other thoughts.

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One memory that stands out from growing up in a small town in the South was the slowness of everything. Church services on Sunday mornings seemingly lasted for hours, and once the service finally ended, it took us 30 minutes to get to the car because we would stop and talk to everyone we knew on the way to the parking lot. If we went to Waffle House for lunch, the waitress would come by our table five minutes after we sat down, make small talk for a minute, and disappear for another five minutes before returning with our silverware, laying out each utensil one by one. Everyone spoke slowly, extending a three syllable word like “carefully” into four syllables, so it sounds like “keh-err-full-ee,” and every monologue began with a five minute anecdote to set the scene.

Small towns in the south are also simple. Tifton, Georgia, where I grew up, is a town of 20,000 people. Everyone knows everyone, or at most, you’re two degrees of separation removed. You go to church on Sunday mornings, you play high school football on Friday nights, and you watch the Dawgs on Saturdays. In the fall you go deer hunting, in the winter you go duck hunting, and in the summer you spray pesticides on the farm in the morning before football practice in the afternoon.

Everything is easygoing, cyclical, predictable, and familiar. And for most of my adolescence, I wanted out. I wanted novelty, excitement, intrigue. Something to break up the familiarity of everything.

I remember 12-year-old me being distraught that I would never be able to leave the South because my family had a farm and some land, and I thought that I was destined to live in South Georgia forever to tend to our property. To me, the idea of never being able to leave the south, forever stuck in life at 0.75x speed, sounded like prison. (Slightly older me was happy to learn that there were actually plenty of other options such as selling the land, hiring someone to manage it, or having one of my cousins who might end up in Georgia absolve me of the responsibility. But whomst among us didn’t experience the unrelenting burden of life at 12 years old?)

Having a farm was cool. I liked that we had a 4-wheeler and an old Jeep. But I wasn’t a southern guy. Not small town deep south, anyway. I wasn’t obsessed with my truck (though I miss having a truck). I liked college football but, despite playing it for five years, I never understood the cult-like obsession with the Dawgs and the Tide. It always seemed nonsensical. I didn’t particularly like hunting (though I did kill a buck when I was 11), and I just found myself bored. A lot.

12-year-old me would be happy to learn that after graduating from high school, I lived in increasingly urbanized areas full of increasingly diverse, novel experiences. I went to undergrad in a city with 150,000 people, spent two years living in Atlanta, population 600,000, spent a year backpacking around Europe and Argentina, and finally moved to New York, the epicenter of the western world, for business school. If Tifton has an opposite, it’s New York. F-150s were replaced with subways and Citibikes. The two local bars that closed at midnight were replaced by a near-infinite supply of nightlife options that stayed open til 4 AM (and at least one, the Spring Lounge, reopens at 8 AM. I’ve never been before noon, but maybe one day). Even compared to Atlanta, New York felt like an upgrade by most metrics. The food was richer. The professional opportunities were night and day. The girls were more attractive, and, unlike Atlanta, where you’re a leper if you aren’t married by 25, no one is in a rush, making for a more opportunistic dating scene.

I love New York.

New York will also chew you up and spit you out in a heartbeat.

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Everything that makes the city exhilarating also makes it exhausting. Living in downtown Manhattan, as soon as I walk out of my apartment, I’m consumed by sensory overload. There’s a line of 20 people waiting to eat at 12 Chairs, the Israeli restaurant below my place, and the music is blasting from one of the two dining rooms as people are dancing on tables and shaking tambourines. You can head out for a casual dinner and drinks with friends at 8:30, blink, and find yourself Ubering home, disheveled, from the Lower Eastside at 3 in the morning.

And it’s a Thursday.

Everyone is rich. Or at least you think everyone is rich, because everyone is spending an egregious amount of money on everything. Rent is $3,000 (or more). Everyone dresses well, so a decent sense of fashion is table stakes. Beers are $10. Cocktails are $20. A first date is $150. A second date is even more. A casual night out can cost you $200. Of course, personal finances are like poker, where no one knows anyone else’s hand. Some people don’t have to spend a dime on rent thanks to their families, while others are racking up credit card debt to maintain a full social calendar while living in a shoebox in Murray Hill.

There’s always something to do, therefore you feel like you always have to do something. Everything is expensive, so you feel implored to make more money as quickly as possible. Of course, then lifestyle creep kicks in, creating a perpetual cycle of making more —> spending more. But the biggest problem with New York is that it doesn’t leave you time to think. Any vacuum in your social calendar, any moment of clarity, is instantly filled with thoughts of the next “thing.” The next social event, the next happy hour, the next promotion, the next job, the next date, the next side hustle, the next project. Every ounce of silence is replaced by noise. Distraction. Dopamine. It’s exhausting.

On his birthday a few days ago, Will Manidis shared ten lessons for life, and the last one stuck out to me:

Silence matters, don’t let the world steal that from you.

C.S. Lewis: “The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.”

Find moments of silence, protect them fiercely. The Devil fills the world with noise to prevent you from finding out what really matters. Take the airpods out. Take a long walk, Get out of the city. Sit alone with your thoughts.

“Silence matters, don’t let the world steal that from you.”

If there were ever a thief of silence, it’s New York. It demands your full attention, like what a siren demands from sailors passing her by at sea. It’s seductive. It’s exhilarating. And if you don’t step away every once in a while, it will chew you up and spit you out.

Leaving small town USA was good for me, but this Thanksgiving, after living independently in different cities over the last five years, I realized that I’ve developed a healthy respect for where I grew up.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, as it meant seeing family, getting a break from work/school, and, of course, eating some phenomenal southern cooking (have you had fried chicken, green bean casserole, and steak for lunch? It’s to die for).

This year, Thanksgiving was especially good because it provided solace. Escape. This was my first year living in the real, post-school NYC. It’s been a year of change, exploration, and second (or third) guessing. It’s also been one of the most fun, hectic, exciting years of my life. What it has not been, however, is a year of reflection. How can you reflect when you’re perpetually bombarded with the next “thing?”

South Georgia, thankfully, doesn’t have a next “thing.” In fact, at my grandparents’ house, it doesn’t even have cell phone service. And I’ve realized that’s a feature, not a flaw, because it gave me a chance to unplug, reset, and take stock of where I am in life, and where I want to go. A fast-paced life is fantastic for an extroverted soul, but you have to occasionally take your foot off the gas and rest. It’s too easy to lose control, or, at least, lose sight of where you’re going otherwise.

So this Thanksgiving, I was thankful for the place I spent 18 years longing to escape. I was thankful to have a break from the thrill I’d chased for the last five years. More than anything, I was thankful to have an opportunity to slow everything down, if just for a moment. Life is full of contradictions like this, I think. Anyway, happy (late) Thanksgiving,

- Jack

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Jack's Picks

• Great 2023 piece from Rob Henderson about the “age 30 crisis” and the seasons of a man’s life. Late 20s are weird (as I’ve realized) and this encapsulated some thoughts I’ve been having quite well.

• Insane 2015 Wall Street Journal feature about a British banker who contemplated suicide after being charged by the US for financial fraud (rigging Libor) during the financial crisis.

• Cool reflective piece from my man Cyrus Yari discussing his unorthodox career path, from finance, to digital marketing, to coding and more.