If I Don't Build It...

There’s a certain kind of ache that doesn’t go away.

You distract yourself. You chase other fires. You bury it under jobs, and moves, and the holy grind of keeping your shit together.

But it lingers.

For me, it started a few years ago. I built something that looked like a tribe. A community woven into the jiu jitsu gym Shelly and I ran. It had potential. It even had momentum. But the foundation was flawed.

The gym was a sinking ship, because of COVID and because I'm not really cut out for gym ownership. And I tied the Tribe to it. Foolishly.

Worse, I cast the net too wide. I didn’t define who it was for, because I didn’t trust exclusivity. Didn’t trust myself to lead something real.

So when the gym went under, the Tribe dissolved with it.

At the time, there was too much chaos to grieve. But when the dust settled, the doubt crept in. About my leadership. About the idea itself. About whether anyone would really want what I was building.

The Question That Haunted Me

Was the idea flawed? Or was I just not ready?

Turns out, it was both.

I hadn’t lived enough. I hadn’t broken enough. I hadn’t asked the right questions yet.

Back then, my vision was mostly about masculinity. It had teeth, sure. But it was one-sided. It didn’t account for the full spectrum of what it means to be whole.

It wasn’t until I stumbled into a collision of ideas: Scott Barry Kaufman’s science of growth, Jordan Peterson’s call to archetype, Jack Donovan’s fire and brotherhood, Chip Conley’s midlife alchemy... that the design began to shift.

I realized:
This isn’t about men.
It’s about humans.
Whole ones.
Wounded ones.
Ones trying to remember something we were never taught.

And what we’re remembering… is each other.

The Ache That Drives It

I’ve had glimpses of it before. The tribes I miss had a pulse.

Fight Club, our jiu jitsu crew in San Diego. The Hobby Joggas, our ultrarunning band of misfits from Michigan. Both were different. But both let us be real. No masks. No posturing. Just raw, relentless presence.

Fight Club was chaos with discipline. We trained like animals. We joked like degenerates. And somehow, we held each other up through the worst of it.

The Hobby Joggas? We ran ourselves to the edge of madness for fun. But in that suffering, something sacred formed. On trails, in trucks, around campfires... that was our cathedral.

Neither group asked us to play small. They didn’t just tolerate who Shelly and I were. They amplified it. They made space for our weirdness. Our dark humor. Our refusal to take life too seriously, even when we were dead serious about the work.

They gave us a place to bleed and laugh and fuck around and still matter. And then… they were gone.

We moved. Life moved. And the ache returned.

Right now, I get scraps of it. Moments. Glimmers. But no tribe. And I’m realizing: Without that social container? My soul slowly dies.

Why I Didn’t Give Up

I’ve failed before. Tribe attempts. Gym closures. A blog about manhood and fire that never lit.

But here’s what I know now:

Failure is never the end.
Failure is the whisper that says:
“Try again. Try better. Try truer.”

I didn’t abandon the dream. I sharpened it.

I kept asking questions. What’s missing from my life? Why doesn’t any of this modern shit feel real? How do we live lives of meaning, purpose, and connection in a culture that rewards performance over presence?

And then one day, the answer hit me:

The Tribe isn’t just an idea. It’s a Rube Goldberg machine designed to solve a simple, impossible problem:

How do we become whole again?

The Evolution That Changed Everything

What’s different this time?

Everything.

I finally have a frame that holds it all. Kaufman gave me the roadmap for self-actualization: for individuals and for groups. Peterson gave me myth and structure. Donovan gave me fire and edge. Conley gave me perspective and depth.

I stopped pretending modernity wasn’t breaking us. I stopped pretending polarity didn’t matter. I stopped trying to build a community that everyone could join. I started designing a system for those of us who ache for more. And I let it evolve. This time, I accounted for all of it:

• Masculine and feminine.
• Growth and shadow.
• Myth and memory and movement.
• ... and so on.
  

Not a support group. Not a social club. Not a lifestyle brand.

A Tribe.

Who Is It For?

The disillusioned. The edgewalkers. The gifted-but-adrift. The ones who left.

If you’ve tasted Tribe and lost it,
If your soul’s gone quiet trying to survive “normal” life,
If you’re powerful but untrusted, even by yourself,
If you crave connection but can’t stand disingenuous performance,

Then this is for you.

We’re not healing to be palatable. We’re becoming dangerous and devoted.

Why It Matters Now

Because if I don’t build it… who will?

Not for me. But for us.

It doesn’t matter that I’m the one building it. It matters that it gets built. That this exists in the world. That someone like you reads this and thinks: Yes. That’s it. That’s what I’ve been trying to name."

The Last Flame

This is the myth I’ll leave behind. The culture I never found, but finally decided to create. It’s not about influence. Or validation. Or relevance. It’s about the Fire that won’t go out. It’s about the version of me who knows his time is limited, And wants to build something that outlives him.

Something that can breathe. That can evolve. That can hold all of us, monster and mythmaker alike. So no one else has to ache alone in a world that forgot how to build Fire. I’m not done.

I’m just getting started.

You?

~Jason

 

 

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Maybe We Don’t Fear Failure. Maybe We Fear Success That Traps Us

 

In the last post, I revealed a major shift in my perspective. In this post, I dig into the psychology of that shift.

There’s a strange contradiction I’ve lived with most of my adult life:
I am both deeply capable of commitment, and secretly terrified of it.

I’ve run 100-mile ultramarathons. I’ve trained in jiu jitsu for over a decade. I’ve stayed married for 21 years. I’ve written books, fought in a cage, and rebuilt myself more times than I can count.

But when it comes to launching something like The Tribe, something communal, mythic, and deeply personal, I hesitate.

Not because I doubt the vision.
Not because I fear failure.

But because I fear abandoning it once I succeed.

I’ve noticed a pattern in myself:
I immerse fully into a new world, whether it be barefoot running, fighting, magic, writing, even entire careers. I go deep, fast. I master it quickly. And then, eventually, I see through it. I start to notice the flaws, the cracks in the foundation, the political underbelly, the limits. And once I see those things, it becomes easy to walk away.

I rationalize the exit.

I tell myself, “I outgrew it.” Or, “Staying in this world is bad for me.”
And sometimes that’s true.
But sometimes, I think I just didn’t build a structure that could grow with me.

Recently, I came face-to-face with the deeper truth:

I didn’t walk away because I changed. I walked away because the thing couldn’t.

And that’s what I’ve feared about launching The Tribe.
Not that it would fail.
But that I would one day outgrow it, feel trapped inside it, and leave people behind in the fallout.

Because that would be a betrayal, not just of the others, but of myself.

But here’s the revelation:
What if I could build The Tribe to evolve with me?

What if commitment didn’t mean freezing myself in time, but designing something alive enough to shed skins with me?

What Burns Me Out

When I look back at the times I’ve walked away, I see three common threads:

• Obligation without renewal: When I’m doing it because I have to, not because it’s still making me.
• Lack of creative agency: When I feel like a manager instead of a creator.
• Misalignment: When the thing no longer reflects who I am, and there’s no way to change it without blowing it up.

It’s not that I can’t stay.
It’s that I can’t stay in something that won’t evolve.

So What Does Sustainable Commitment Look Like?

It doesn’t look like forever.
It doesn’t look like obligation.
It doesn’t look like being trapped by my own creation.

It looks like ritualized renewal.

Here’s what I’m building into The Tribe:

Seasonal Presence: I lead in seasons. Intensity followed by retreat. Like a warrior returning to the mountain.

Creative Sovereignty: I have the power to reshape the structure. The Tribe isn’t special because it never changes. It’s special because it knows how to change.

The Council: A circle of trusted co-leaders who can carry the mission when I step back. Not as replacements, but as reflections.

Mythic Evolution: The Tribe will have its own life cycle. Every few years, it will enter a new age. We will mark it. Shed skins. Tell new stories.

The Drift Signal: A way for me (and others) to name misalignment before it becomes resentment. To say, "I feel something shifting," without shame.

I no longer want to be afraid of commitment.
I want to live inside a commitment designed for someone like me (and maybe you): someone who evolves, questions, shifts, pauses, returns.

The man who used to build beautiful things and walk away?
He wasn’t broken.
He was scouting for a place worthy of staying.

I think I’ve finally built it.
Not a system. Not a brand. Not a platform.
Something living.

One that sheds skins.
One that welcomes the man I’ll become.
One that creates a real community for others to do the same.

This is how I stay.
Not forever.
But for as long as it remains true.

And this time, I’m designing it so it always can be.

 

~Jason 

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