Stay Foolish, Stay Dreamin

Sup nerds, you're reading Cyber Patterns.

What I’ve been reading: The Weekend Drift

Almost 6 months ago, a young college kid named Jack Moses asked me to hop on his podcast. He was just starting out on Twitter and wanted to chat.

Fast-forward to present day and Jack is making a healthy living writing online, grew his Twitter to 10k, dropped out of college, and is living the digital nomad life. I’m so proud of this dude. Subscribe to follow his journey.

During high school classes, I did mostly 1 of 4 things:

1. Tweeted funny stuff at my friends

2. Texted with girls

3. Played on Photoshop

4. Took notes and paid attention

One day during junior year, I posted a few of my Photoshop designs on the marketplace Redbubble and then got a sale. Then more sales started coming in. By senior year, I’d make $40,000+ selling stickers on Photoshop.

When I posted the stickers, I had no idea if my designs would sell. I had no clue if anyone would like them. I thought they were dope and I wanted to make some money to buy Chipotle and weed. I was foolish and hopeful. And on the internet, being foolish and hopeful often pays off.

The only way to make it online is to be an underthinking optimist. Anytime I put out work, I’m worried people won’t like it, but I remain foolish and hopeful to believe that people will like it. So I say fuck it and I post it. Often I’m wrong, people don’t like it, and I end up deleting a tweet. But every now and then I tweet a viral banger that gets almost 1 million views.

When I started this blog, I was hopeful people would subscribe to it. I was foolish enough to think that I could build a big newsletter despite the odds of me failing. I didn’t write a business plan or growth strategy. I just figured I’d tweet a lot of cool shit and then people would subscribe to it. And if I did that for long enough, I’d have a sizable newsletter. Boom.

Cyber Patterns now has nearly 6,000 subscribers and I’m still foolish and hopeful enough to believe I’ll have 100,000 subscribers in a couple years. Because why not? On the internet, anything is possible. In just 3 years, I went from making $75/article at the local paper to making $30,000/month working with startups. Why can’t I hit 100,000 subscribers? Why can’t you?

There’s nothing special about me. I have no special advantage. In fact, objectively, I have many disadvantages: college dropout, drug addiction, etc. The only thing different about me is I was dumb enough to think I could do it and resilient enough to keep doing it for 10+ years. So why not you too?

As Steve Jobs says, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” The creators who are crazy enough to think they can hit 100,000 followers, sell a screenplay, or make $1M/year are the ones who are the ones who do. For 60 seconds, I want you to ask yourself what your craziest dreams are.

• Is it hitting $100,000/month in revenue?

• Selling a screenplay?

• Buying a place in Paris?

Stop thinking about all the reasons why something won’t happen. Consider this question: if other people could do it, why can’t you? Confession time, the above dreams are 3 of my dreams. They sound crazy, but it’s physically possible that you or I could do all of the above, right? There’s no law of nature saying it’s impossible. It’s not like telling a midget to go play in the NBA. People have gone from not having sold a screenplay to having sold a screenplay, midgets don’t become 7-foot centers. To quote Jobs again, “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.” Every beautiful creation was made up by people that are no more creative than you. They just worked really fucking hard.

People like to idolize artists and movie star and think it all comes so natural. My favorite example is when a journalist asked Andy Warhol if the secret to his success was his weird legendary personality. “I just work all the time,” Warhol replied laughing in his weird Warhol way. That’s the fucking secret. To stay weird and crazy like Andy Warhol while simultaneously working like an absolute savage, to stay as peculiar as Nathan Fielder but also end up on Time’s 100 Most Influential People list.

You must strike a yin and yang balance of staying foolish and immature enough to think your crazy dreams can come true while staying mature and strong enough to work hard to make them happen. You must always stay foolish enough to hold onto hope of your wildest dreams, but mature and strong enough not to let people knock the hope out of you.

“They really almost got me. They came this close to really beating any curiosity out of me,” Jobs says about his teachers. My foolish dreams nearly got beat out of me too. Teachers, parents, classmates, drugs. But I held onto hope, I worked hard, I stayed foolish, and I stayed dreamin. I’ll continue to do just that and I hope you join me. Life’s a lot more fun as a dreamer.

Creators Corner

3 things/experiences that helped me be a better creator this week:

🧠 The Steve Jobs Archive was released this week including an e-book called Make Something Wonderful. I’ve been loving every moment of it.

🌅 Did you see I now have vaporwave sunsets as my dividers? Shout-out to my designer friend Nico Muoio for making those. Go follow him and say hi.

📘 I’m obsessed with Readwise for all things digital reading. Readwise organizes your Kindle highlights + lets you highlight blogs and newsletters. I’m so obsessed they even sent me a t-shirt and stickers lolol.

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason Levin

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Until next edition, see you on Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn.