When something hurts, I buy something.
I spent four thousand dollars on a silent meditation retreat because I couldn't sit alone with my own thoughts for ten minutes.
Seven days. No phones. A guy in linen pants walking us through breathing exercises while incense burned in a room that cost more per night than my parents ever spent on a family vacation.
I lasted three days. Left early. Booked a villa with a pool instead and told myself I'd meditate on my own.
I didn't. I floated in the pool and scrolled my phone and ordered room service and felt exactly the same as before I spent the money.
That's what I do now. When something hurts, I buy something. When I'm restless, I book a flight. When I'm lonely, I upgrade to a nicer apartment like loneliness gives a shit about square footage.
The trap is that money was the only problem I ever learned how to solve. And now that the money works, I keep reaching for it when the problem isn't money.
When I ran my logistics company, everything was a money problem. Truck breaks down. Money. Employee quits. Money to replace them. Client's angry. Throw a discount at it. Need more business. Spend on ads. The whole operation ran on one fuel and I got really damn good at producing it.
Then I built income streams that mostly run themselves and the revenue kept showing up. But the problems changed. They became things like: I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I haven't had a close friend in two years. I wake up some mornings with no reason to get out of bed besides a number on a screen.
So I kept reaching for the only tool I knew.
Three months ago I was in a rough stretch. Not sleeping. Not focusing. Just vibrating at the wrong frequency.
So I booked a $200 a night Airbnb with an ocean view, bought a surfboard I didn't need, signed up for a cooking class, and downloaded two meditation apps with annual subscriptions. Spent close to two grand in a week addressing a feeling I never once tried to name.
You've done this. Maybe you hired a business coach when what you needed was a therapist. Maybe you bought a coworking membership when what you needed was one honest friend. Maybe you signed up for a mastermind because sitting in a room full of successful people felt like forward motion even though you left every session exactly the same.
Every purchase feels like a decision. Like progress. But you're just converting an emotional question into a financial transaction because transactions are comfortable. You know how those work. You're good at those.
A buddy back home makes a fraction of what I make. Same auto shop since we were twenty-two. Wife, kid, bowling league on Thursdays. When something's eating at him he calls his brother or sits on his porch with a beer or takes a walk around the block.
He's never spent a dollar trying to feel better. He just feels it. Sits in it. Lets it pass.
I can't do that. When the feeling shows up I open an app. Book something. Buy something. Move somewhere. My credit card is my coping mechanism and the revenue keeps rolling in just fast enough to keep the cycle spinning.
Last month I felt that thing again. That low hum in your chest when nothing is wrong but nothing feels right. I was sitting near the water in a town I'd been in for three weeks. Almost booked a flight to Morocco. Phone in hand. Departure times loading.
I closed the app. Sat on the bench. Didn't meditate. Didn't journal. Didn't do a single thing someone could package into a course and sell back to me. Just sat there like a guy on a bench with nowhere to be.
Forty minutes. Most uncomfortable forty minutes I've had in a long time. Worse than the retreat. Because nothing stood between me and the feeling. No transaction. No booking confirmation. No receipt proving I was handling it.
My parents never bought their way out of a hard feeling. They couldn't afford to. Nine kids and barely enough to cover the month. When my dad was stressed he sat at the kitchen table with coffee and stared at the wall until it passed. When my mom was overwhelmed she went out back and pulled weeds until she wasn't.
They processed their whole lives for free. I've spent thousands trying to learn what they did with a coffee cup and a patch of dirt.
Money was supposed to give me options. It did. But somewhere in there I forgot that sitting still is one of them. And it might be the only one that works.
— Best, Jose
