☆ Start Here ☆
There’s a low-grade anxiety humming beneath contemporary life right now. Not panic exactly — something more pervasive and persistent. The structures and stories that got us here are revealing their limits. The old maps no longer match the territory. And every platform, every pundit, every algorithm has a confident explanation for what’s happening and what comes next, each one louder and more certain than the last.
Most of us are just wondering: what is going on?
What we’re living through isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a threshold: the disorienting in-between when what was is clearly ending, and what comes next hasn’t taken shape yet. And the noise isn’t helping. Neither are the systems built to make us more efficient, more optimized, more productive. They were built for machines. You are not a machine.
The question worth asking isn’t how to get through this faster. It’s who are you becoming in the middle of it?
That’s what this newsletter is about.
If you’ve felt the weight of that question—who am I becoming, and how do I get there—you’re in the right place. I founded R21.5 x MjR because I believe that becoming who we’re designed to be is real, possible work. Not self-improvement. Not optimization. The slower, more honest work of formation—integrating who you are with how you actually live.
Welcome. You’ve found your people.
Every cycle, we explore one central idea through three lenses:
Human Be(com)ing You’re navigating a world that moves faster than any of us can process. This lens gives you the language and frameworks to understand what’s actually shaping you—so you can respond deliberately instead of just reacting.
Sustainable Systems Most productivity advice wasn’t built for a human life. This lens is where we find the tools, processes, and practices that actually work: not because they’re efficient, but because they honor how you’re actually designed.
People Watching We become who we watch. This lens draws on the lives of historical, fictional, and contemporary people who’ve figured out something worth learning, and what it might look like to apply it to your own.
You’ll also find The Monthly Muster — a once-a-cycle digest that pulls the threads together: synthesis, links, and a few thoughts you won’t find anywhere else.
The newsletter runs on a six-week rhythm: four weeks of original content, one week of integration, and one week of rest. Because sustainable rhythms matter.
Why Subscribe?
I write as a pilgrim on the way — not as an expert dispensing answers, but as a conversation partner doing the work alongside you. This is formation, not information: the kind of deep, slow practice that helps you integrate your past story, present choices, and future vision into a life lived with purpose.
If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re in the right place.
Just want The Monthly Muster? You can manage your subscription settings on your account page.
Ready to go deeper?
Formation is deliberate, embodied work. It happens in community, over time, through practice, and it builds something specific: a person who desires well, decides wisely, and acts differently. Sometimes the newsletter is enough. Sometimes you need something more direct.
That’s where Systems Therapy comes in: a single working session designed to find the one thing slowing everything down, and build a clear path forward. Because purpose determines what systems you need, and sustainable systems honor how you’re actually designed, not how machines work.
If you’re inspired by anything I share, drop me a line and let me know. I’d love to hear what’s resonating.
Shalom,
A Note About AI
I use LLMs (or chatbots, or Clippy’s sophisticated older cousin) at the END of my writing process. This helps me edit the work, zoom out to find patterns I've missed, and generate social media posts, title ideas, and other related tasks that make me want to shrivel up in a corner and die. The blood, sweat, and tears? Wholly my own.