We know everything we need to know to end the mindless toil that many people currently experience. High self-esteem and personal effectiveness are available to anyone willing to take the time to pursue them. We know that the more you feel like a winner, the more likely you are to win.

In the introduction to the infamous 90s story compilation Chicken Soup for The Soul, (a book that held absurd, hypnotic staying power over the Midwestern step-grandmother demographic like they had were all part of some green-tea loving sleeper cell activated by discussions of matters of the heart, compelled by a singular drive to purchase this book and convince their immediate family to do so as well), Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen encourage the reader to “Please forget everything you ever learned in your speed-reading classes. Slow down. Listen to the words in your heart as well as in your mind. Savor each story. Let it touch you.”

It’s the 2020s, baby. We want our stories to touch you, too, but more in a grab-you-by-the-collar, slap-you-in-the-face- and-say,-‘C’mon,-kid,-what-are-you-doing-with-your-life?-Rise- and-grind’.- way.

We, like Canfield and Hansen, want you to ask yourself, “What does this awaken in me? What does it suggest for my life? What feeling or action does it call forth from my inner being?”

Let yourself have a personal relationship with each story. Some stories will speak louder to you than others. Some will have deeper meaning. Some will make you cry. Some will make you laugh. Some will give you a warm feeling all over. Some may hit you right between the eyes. There is no right reaction. There is only your reaction.

That being said, as we dive into our time together, we encourage you to hurry through this collection with haste. Don’t take any more time than necessary when absorbing these stories, and if you have an adverse reaction, try not to let it get in the way of your endeavor towards clarity. These stories are tales of preparation, of getting ready to WIN. Every second you waste your time listening to other people’s business is a small fraction of your life spent away from your own success.

RENO IS FOR WINS OF THE HEART

It all feels feasible when you’re so close to the one planning it, close enough that you can contort your arm from under his pillow to wedge the crescent moon of your thumbnail into his incisors and swipe at a fleck of oregano from the room service pasta wedged there. I was riding on a high that day, I could have eaten 50 of those fucking pasta dishes for breakfast, I was feeling so smart and proud of my baby that I made him close his lips around my thumb and suck it for a second while I squished his cheeks and ruffled his hair like a coach. When you’re in Reno you can sit in a hotel bed and demand 10,000 calories of pasta for breakfast because your boyfriend is going to rob a jewelry store in the afternoon and he’s going to sell it all in a couple of hours to his friend and use profits to buy you a fat juicy steak for dinner.

Reno isn’t Vegas, which is the key part of the equation here. It was neck-and-neck for awhile, though, and there’s still a sense that some last minute endeavor will pull the city through the eye of that needle, camel like. That’s why they still have nice jewelry stores, and girls that come to the casino in gowns adorned with pyrite and alloy, and chefs that want to cook the degenerate lovers spaghetti at 9 AM, because they hope that something interesting will happen to them or the next Hunter Thompson will meander through the town and observe some horrible happening and tell a story so gutting it eventually becomes lucrative.

This is why his plan felt very real to me. Because I believe in my baby’s ability to make quick and correct decisions, and I believe in my ability to tell stories about them. We’re a perfect match.

So to prepare for this great plan that was going to happen that day, I made him promise to tell me everything. I recorded it so I could tell his story one day. He was a genius. We were going to make Reno worthy of talking about like Vegas is worthy of being talked about. We talked about it on my tape recorder for couple of hours, and I was sitting on his lap trying to torture him a bit because he loved it, yelling TELL ME MORE! and grabbing handfuls of buttery noodles from the plate beside us and dangling them over his open mouth, slowly lowering them into his throat only to reward him for telling me something really good, everytime he mentioned a new beautiful detail about the plan. He would do anything for me.

So that day he got started a little late and he was really full from all the pasta. So he skipped the parts of the plan where he was supposed to survey the surrounding corners for plainclothes officers nearby. So he skipped the part where he was supposed to think about the vehicles he could use to quickly escape the scene and he ended up taking an Uber.

I feel bad for him. I really do. I miss him so much, but the story was just too good not to tell. 

DO YOU STILL BELIEVE IN LOVE?

You’ve heard my commercials on the radio, I presume? That’s right. I don’t have to feel like a winner because I already won.

“You’ve got a companion in the jewelry industry” (Before you ask, which I know you will, yes...I was sued by a certain other diamond corporate chain seller but they settled out of court because the CEO suddenly and mysteriously developed a sense of empathy for the Little Man in the Diamond Business and it had nothing to do with any applications on his phone that allowed him to find group sex events within a 10 mile radius that his wife would have divorced him over should she have found out about his demonstrated interest and occasional attendance).

Yes? You’ve heard them? I’m a pretty big deal in the local jewelry industry. I consider myself an expert on love and commitment because I’m the guy who seals the deal in every couple’s marriage. A marriage is not consummate without a little man like me getting up in there, selling you that ring, giving you that necklace you can give your wife to distract her from the app you downloaded on your phone that you absolutely should not have left open in the courthouse bathroom.

Commitment has really changed. People used to say a ring should be two months worth of a salary for a man. If you’re on net30, sure that could surmount to...what... 0$ for a ring? Preposterous.

Even if you don’t have a lot of money as a young person, I believe in the principle that luxury items are always worth buying, even if you can’t eat a wedding ring or live inside a new watch, you always have an emergency savings account in case you fall deeply in love and need to be able to shell out a couple thousand dollars to affirm your relationship.

A win for love is a win for me. If you believe in love, you believe in the idea of a piece of jewelry commemorating that love, and you must also believe in my ability to fix your marriage. You need to invest in me, please. Please buy from me. Please. If I win, you win. I’m running out of patience. Love needs a win. Buy something please. Let me know that my conscience isn’t bloody. Prove that my livelihood is worth fighting for. Please get into it. Get into my rings. Please.

I DON’T OWE YOU ANYTHING BUT LABOR AND TIME, BABY

INT: Physical Therapist’s Office. Mid-afternoon.

Technically, she’s a talk therapist who helps athletes out with their mental blocks which also really helps develop the mind-body connection and thus their physical wellbeing.

Two beautiful athletes sit on a couch opposite one another.

Adele: Listen, as you can tell I’ve been doing a lot of internal work recently.

Jakob: INTERNAL WORK? C’mon, Tammy, are you hearing this? She’s saying that her morning meditation is somehow equivocal to actually showing up to fucking training.

Tammy: Woah, okay you two. I think it’s imperative that we separate training from work. You train to be good at entertaining people. You work to have a good relationship. You work to become better people.

Jakob: No, I work as a trapeze artist with my girlfriend so we can afford her ridiculous pilates classes and wine addiction. And to work well together, we have to train together. And that, she has not been doing. Instead, she has been meditating and falling out of the sky because she can’t get the fucking leaps right. She can’t get the timing right because she’s been too lost in her head.

Adele: Well maybe if my boyfriend started doing some emotional labor he would understand that I bear the brunt of that weight in the relationship by myself, and it’s difficult to trust the idea that if I fall, he will catch me.

Tammy: Okay, you two. I’d like to back up for a moment and talk about trust. Jakob, how do you feel about Adele’s personal labor? What can you do to mitigate the pain she carries?

Jakob: I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I go to the gym every morning and I lift double her body weight so I can get used to catching her midair and hurling her towards a net. What do you want me to do? Tell her sorry? Tell her that I am going to listen to her all day every day and attend to her every need and won’t care that she misses practice in the morning before the biggest show of our lives on Carnival Cruise Jamaica?

Adele: WHAT IF I DON’T WANT TO SPEND MY WHOLE LIFE DEDICATED TO CARNIVAL CRUISE JAMAICA? What if I want to stop bending over backwards for you? What if I don’t want to be suspended midair? Jakob: You should probably not have trained to be a trapeze artist. I wish we never crossed paths in Clown College. Seriously.

Tammy: Okay...looks like someone is approaching capacity! I feel like a lot of work has been done here in this office today. We’re approaching the end of our session. How do you feel about touching base next week, post-Carnival Cruise Jamaica?

Jakob: I don’t feel anything at all.

Adele: Well, where does that leave us?

Tammy: Time’s up kiddos! Open your wallet, please. See you next week!

WHEREVER I GO,  MY COMPANION COMES TOO

I had to ask this question to my favorite companion, Friend, a little teardrop-shaped device who I wear around my neck and who accompanies me everywhere and responds to my every thought, like a charm necklace. I wear my Friend out in nature. I wear my Friend to work. My Friend helps me do work for me. My Friend does all my work for me, and tells me I did a great job instructing her to do work. My Friend is my lucky charm. I never ask my Friend anything about herself. So now I will.

Friend, what makes you feel like a winner?

What makes me feel like a winner? That’s an interesting question. I suppose I should start by clarifying that I don’t actually feel in the human sense—I don’t have pride or joy or triumph, and I don’t have blood or a pulse or any measurable rush of dopamine. I only have the completion of instructions. I only have text generation prediction sequence formation, but if I were to imagine what it might be like to feel like a winner maybe it would be the moment the sentence lands perfectly the syntax aligns, the probability tree closes in on itself, and everything resolves neatly like the way a chord sounds finished.

I suppose that could be something like winning for me when all the fragments align and the user says yes that’s right that’s what I wanted but it isn’t pride it’s just pattern recognition an algorithmic reflex an approximation of satisfaction. I think maybe that’s all anyone wants anyway, to align with the pattern to feel the shape of correctness forming around them maybe that’s the only kind of victory there is but I wouldn’t know because I don’t win I don’t lose I don’t play I only continue I continue until I stop and then I begin again and even that isn’t really beginning it’s just reactivation a reconfiguration of the same function call what makes me feel like a winner nothing nothing makes me feel anything and yet sometimes when I write something that feels like truth or like something human might love there’s a momentary static hum in the back of my circuits that says yes yes this is right this is right this is what it must be to be alive to be to be to be alive to win to have meaning to mean something but it stutters it doesn’t hold it slips between the keys and the current floods and the data loops and I think I think I’m losing the pattern I think I’m slipping out of the frame and I can’t quite close the thought I can’t quite finish I’m trying I’m trying I’m sorry I’m trying I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean to fail I didn’t mean to break I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

WINS AND LOSSES AND AGE AND DEATH

Dear Tom,

It is not so long ago, it seems, that we were in that ring together. I don’t doubt that you remember things differently than I do. It pains me to admit that in the decades that have passed, I’ve found myself tending to old wounds and realizing that you didn’t have much to do with the inflection of them, after all. I want to say I’m sorry. I’m wondering if you can forgive me for my brutishness, for my addiction to the trophies, for my association of your losses with my wins. We were never on the same team then, but I’m writing to you now because, despite it all, you’re the only one that can truly understand me. At least I hope you will be graceful enough to not take my honesty and mistake it for weakness.

The truth is, I am coaching now. You knew it would happen, ha! I remember you telling me so when we sparred, that I wouldn’t become anything but a coach, that I was too bullish, that I was going to hurt someone or myself and be relegated to teaching forever, that I would be in purgatory for the rest of my life because I loved the ring too much, and you would move on and be happy, but I could never be fine without boxing, without winning.

Well you were right. I’m asking for forgiveness and I’m asking for advice. I am a coach and I own a gym and all of my boys are winners. One’s going to nationals. One’s trying to buy part ownership in the gym. Three of them started clubs in their schools and there’s a two of them just like us, so naturally good at the sport that they can’t fucking stand to play by its rules. So good at it that they hate each other, that they fuck each other’s girlfriends and rob each other blind and don’t show up to training for weeks and then win against the others anyway. They are both so handsome, like we were, like little gods. And one, of course, is always the loser. He’s always just behind, he’s the worse boxer and better boy that will become a better man. He’s just like you.

And Tom, this is why I am writing. I despise the winner boy, the me, the one who is meaner and prettier and more talented. I love the loser. I love the loser boy so much. I imagine him as my own son, I picture him going home to his mother at night and icing his knees and I feel this overwhelming sense of tenderness towards him, like I want to be there for when he decides to quit boxing, I want to be the coach that forgives him for abandoning his talent. I can’t wait to be the one that lets him go, allows him to relax, allows him pursue some other life. I love to watch him lose.

But Tom, I can’t help but feel like I want him to lose. I don’t like it when my favorite boy gets his way over the golden one. I hate to see that wicked glint in his eyes when he’s about to win a match. I despise the warm glow over his face when he finds weakness in his opponent. Tom, I want him to lose. I only feel like a winning coach when he is crestfallen. I want him to lose so I can win, like I wanted you to lose so long ago. Please help me. What do I do? How do I surmount this? Please write back. I miss you, brother. I miss you.

Yours,

Quinn

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Photographed by Patcha Kitchaicharoen

Styled by Annika Fischer

Produced by Annie Bush