#PalCrushMonday: Julian Stern
A real Zenboy switcheroo.
Hello, Mal Crush Monday-niacs!
My name is Julian Stern and I’m absolutely honored to be cranking out a Pal Crush Monday for you this wonderful week.
I know Mal through her brother Ben. Ben has been a friend of mine since college and, while our friendship is many things, one of the things is that we get lunch at a deli in Beverly Hills every week (we both live in LA) and he provides me peace and validation I need for various things in my life—personal, professional, or creative—and I tell him what’s happening on TikTok.
Suffice it to say Ben is a very grounding person in my life and when I found out about Mal, I said, “You’re telling me there are even more Kassoys??” Mal and I have met (to my knowledge) only once, but I was dumbfounded to find that the enlightenment I got from Ben I got just as much from Mal, and we have rooted each other on from afar ever since.
This is PROBABLY where I should say that part of the reason I’m PCM-ing this week is because I am bringing my Edinburgh Fringe stand up and musical comedy show to Denver (“The City of Mal”) this week and I would really love for you to come. The show is about reckoning with whether persistence is always a positive attribute, as well as things like my (real) OCD, the time I saw Anne Hathaway at Target, and the Alabama Poop Train Debacle. It’s 7pm Saturday at Chaos Bloom and I swear to god you’ll have fun if you come. Here’s a flyer:
And now that the self-promotion is out of the way (wait, wait, I guess I should say that you can follow me on instagram and TikTok if you want at @julianmstern and check out my weekly Substack The Sternal Journal here) okay, NOW that the self-promotion is out of the way, let’s get to the format:
The format:
What I’m crushing (accomplishing, achieving, attaining, fulfilling, something that I am being successful at.)
What is crushing me (see definition 3b, something that is bringing me down.)
What I’m crushing on (admiring, adoring, appreciating, cherishing, favoriting, etc.)
What I’m Crushing
Marginal gains, baby!!!! I’m a runner and I have been for over 20 years.
(I know that running and working out in general can be eye-rolly at best or traumatic at worst, so let me just say before I go on that my relationship with running is much more mental and dare-I-say spiritual than physical at this point, and I think the thing I’m going to talk about regarding it can be applied to any thing you love or once loved or would like to one day love).
Though I’ve never doubted my identity as a runner, I’ve definitely lost steam over the past year or two in terms of my consistency with it. I told myself as things started to drop off that this was okay and I shouldn’t be hard on myself (which is good), but what I also did was I kept comparing my current relationship with running to my relationship with running when I was physically in the best possible shape and running a marathon or half marathon pretty regularly.
Which is BAD!
It’s bad not only because obviously comparison is the thief of joy bla-bla-bla-etc., but also because by comparing my current running self to my old running self, I was stopping myself from running even when I could!
I kept telling myself, “Next week, we’re gonna get back to baseline,” but I was trying to get back to a baseline that I was no longer comfortable with. And so I did two things:
I told myself, “whatever you ran this week is your new baseline. No negotiation.”
I instituted a thing I call “short ass runs.” They are exactly what they sound like. Runs that are much shorter than even my typically shortest runs.
This made it possible for me to stop chasing something I was currently incapable of achieving and also, by letting myself run way less on individual runs, it actually made me run more because I was able to fit runs into much smaller windows of free time.
Now, after nearly a year of trying to get back to my old routine, I’ve finally given myself the grace and space to instead create a new routine. And wouldn’t you know it, I’m finally seeing growth in this habit I love.
Whatever you’re trying to get back to, I hope that this week, you spend some time letting yourself realize you might already be there.
What’s Crushing Me
Believing that I’m enough in nearly every aspect of my life except for running!
OOPS! You probably thought at the end of that last section, “Man, this guy is zen and in control and has the right outlook on life.” Well, not so fast, bucko!
Here’s the thing: I know intellectually that I’m proud of the life I have. I have wonderful friends and family and partner, I make things that I’m proud of and do work that is meaningful to me, and I’ve at various times in my life made sacrifices that I still feel good about in order to uplift ideals that I believe in.
All sounds pretty hot, right? I get it.
But emotionally, I feel like I’ve gotten everything I have mostly by making overambitious promises to myself and/or others and then, through my failure to meet the big goal, make and/or do and/or be some pretty cool things along the way.
I’m 35. I’ve come to terms that this might just be the way I do things. But it creates a dynamic where I’m constantly and consistently falling short of who I claim to myself that I can be.
When I think of any of the balls I have in the air and the ways in which they might come crashing down, I experience the very therapy-ish thing of asking myself “what’s the worst that could happen?” and then realizing 9 times out of 10, the worst actually wouldn’t be that bad.
But STILL, because my method for nearly everything is to be overambitious—to shoot for the moon and then land among the stars so to speak—I cannot help but feel like, even in success, I am constantly failing my projects, my ambitions, my loved ones, myself.
And that is pretty crushing. I’m going to try to spend some of 2024 interrogating this way of being. Do I need to always dream so big that my executions are nearly certain to fall short of my hopes? Or is there a way I can become more comfortable with this process? Would becoming more comfortable ruin the process? Save it? AAAAAHHH.
If this resonates, just know that I feel you and I love you.
What I’m crushing on
This one will be far quicker. I recently discovered septuagenarian UK drill rappers Pete & Bas on TikTok (I have not told Ben about them at our deli date yet, but I will soon. Gotta dole it out slowly. He’s barely even on Instagram, he can only take so much).
I highly recommend their new music video Stepped Into The Building. I am astounded by how this could just be (and arguably should just be) a novelty act, but they are actually very very good. The flow is insane for some 70-somethings.
And then I would be remiss not to mention Olive, a beautiful little dog who I’ve had the pleasure of dog sitting this week. She was ridiculously cuddly and well-behaved and almost makes me want to get a dog which is huge for me.
Her owner is picking her up right now as I crank this out 15 minutes late to send to Mal. I hope she brings you a little joy too.
THANK YOU
Okay, thank you so much for reading and let’s all give it up for Mal one time for making a space of nonjudgmental encouragement and vulnerability for us all to start every week.
If you’re in Denver, come on out to my show! And if not, feel free to check out the SternJourn!
Much love!
Julian
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A uniting of two of the great human beings and Substack writers in the whole wide WELD! A triumph! A delight!