✨Weekly Insight
Your Commitment Must Be Stronger Than Your Desire
The desire to drink will come. Every single day. But desire is fleeting—it shifts with your mood, your stress, your environment.
Commitment is different. It’s the foundation that doesn’t crack when desire wavers. It’s the decision you made when you were clearheaded, and it’s what you return to when the pull feels overwhelming.
Clarity comes when you stay the course and you finally see yourself for who you are, love flows when you’re present enough to feel it and give it freely, and freedom arrives the moment you realize you're no longer running from your own life—and your commitment to these three things must be stronger than any desire that tries to pull you back.
✍🏻Essays
Anxiety is something that touches us all. Even to this day, I still find myself managing it at times. It’s uncomfortable. The body and mind are not at ease. But I know sobriety has given me the capabilities to work with the anxiety in a much healthier way.
And so the first week of my 10-part series started yesterday and will drop every Friday.
Week 1: Persistent Anxiety in Sobriety
10 Pain Points of Sobriety is a weekly series where I explore the real pain points of quitting alcohol—the uncomfortable truths that surface when initial motivation fades. I didn’t need alcohol to be creative; creativity was already part of my life. Alcohol stole the time and energy I could have spent creating. It was my escape from feelings of inadequa…
💡Disrupt the Pattern
This week’s question hit deep: “What parts of my best work am I protecting by drinking instead of sharing?” We explored Hidden—where fear keeps your best work locked away, and alcohol becomes the excuse not to share it. The discomfort of being seen, the fear of judgment—it’s all real. But when you remove alcohol, you can actually work with that fear instead of numbing it. The action? Share a rough draft of something you’ve been holding back. Not perfect. Just real. Because your best work is ready, and you’re more than capable of putting it out there.
Episode 003 - Disrupt the Pattern
Disrupt the Pattern helps creative professionals break the alcohol cycle that keeps you from addressing the real areas blocking your creativity—feeling blocked, drained, or hidden. Each episode uses a randomized question generator to spark real-time reflection—no scripts, no planning, just honest exploration of what’s potentially blocking your creative …
🎙️Clear Conversations: Creative Minds in Sobriety
I really enjoyed our time with Alicia Cook. Her advocacy and the decision to stop drinking full stop, how sobriety has impacted her creativity was all so inspiring. She was gracious enough to read some of her poetry during the conversation, here’s a snippet:
All things you say unfold with reason, and sorrow is a teacher in a clever disguise.
How kind of you to claim you know my pain, to suggest with such certainty you understand its shape.
I did heed your counsel I left my house, walked beneath the forgiving trees, and wept discreetly where passersby couldn’t see.
Episode 25 with Derek MacDonald on November 6th at 10a EST.
This week on Clear Conversations, I’m sitting down with Derek MacDonald, the mind behind Becoming Unobstructed. Derek is a writer, thinker, and coffee drinker who shares field notes on navigating agency, grief, and creativity in daily life. After 15+ years in marketing, software systems, outdoor education, and leadership development, he’s built a newsletter and podcast that reaches readers in over 32 countries—including billion-dollar companies and small creative teams.
From running three jobs while rebuilding his life after a snowboard accident to getting sober four years ago, Derek’s journey is one of resilience and intentional creativity. We’ll talk about how sobriety became a turning point in his creative life, how he moved across the country and faced a breakup in the same week he got sober, and how he channeled all of that into building something meaningful.
We’ll dive into his MAP Year Project, the importance of asking “why,” and how he’s learned to make room for both creativity and stability without burning out or ditching your dreams. This is a conversation about what it takes to become unobstructed—in sobriety, in creativity, and in life.
P.S. You can view past newsletter editions here.
Ready To Go Deeper?
🎯 Alcohol may be quietly impacting your creative potential.
Below is a 5-minute quiz that reveals exactly how it’s affecting your specific creative expression—and how alcohol might be maintaining it.
🧐 You may already know alcohol could be impacting your creative potential.
Each step forward is an act of becoming the person you want to be.
Thank you for being here.
Josh
What a great conversation with Alicia. I related a lot to the experience of going to a wedding just after getting sober and being a ball of nerves. Loved hearing her describe the conviction in her decision making, though.
Psyched for our chat on the 6th!