The Rebel Onion Newsletter

10/08/2026

How many "orphan folders" are sitting on your computer right now?

Decks for days. Product concepts. App wireframes. Merch designs. Entire projects sitting on desktop drives, waiting on something that isn't creative.

We convince ourselves we need "one more pass" or "one more revision." But the truth is, protecting the work by never shipping it is the ultimate trap.

The hard part isn't the craft. The hard part is letting the object leave your hands and start to live its own life out in the market.

True failure is never getting started at all. Keep trying, and eventually you'll hit that bullseye.

Read Week 72 of The Rebel Onion now: https://www.therebelonion.com/the-making-layer-making-was-the-amateur-question-follow-through-is-the-real-one-72/

10/08/2026

There's a folder on my computer with a full brand deck I built over the last couple years. Logo. Product system. Photography direction. The whole treatment. Solves a real problem I personally lived through. The world still needs this solution. The design is done.

The folder hasn't moved in a year.

That folder isn't alone. An AI app concept nobody's building yet. A 71-week archive of this newsletter that could already be a book. A pile of shirt designs I'd love to print. A children's book forming through my son that I could hand-draw scene by scene because that's what I actually do.

All real. All sitting. All waiting on something that isn't creative.

I thought the hard part of being a maker was the making. Turns out that was the amateur question. I ship weekly. I've shipped weekly for 72 weeks straight. The making is not what's gating anything in my life right now.

The hard part is harder. When does the object leave your hands, and when does the commitment follow it?

Here's the piece I usually keep offstage. The people I love are on the other side of the leap. My wife is working a job that isn't the life she wants. The plan has always been to build something that lets her come home. We have ideas for the next chapter. Homeschooling. More time. More room to shape our son's early years on our terms.

None of that happens without the work paying its own way.

The making isn't an abstract craft question for me anymore. There's a clock. The clock is real. The clock is my family.

Week 72 is live. The Making Layer.

therebelonion.com/the-making-layer-making-was-the-amateur-question-follow-through-is-the-real-one-72

The making is no longer the hard part—it’s letting the work leave your hands and start living. Week 72 uncovers the orphan folders on your desktop, the clock ticking behind your craft, and why elegance without the courage to close is just performance. Let it ship. 🧅

10/08/2026

How many “business idea folders” are sitting on your computer right now?

Concepts, decks, product sketches, whole brands built out in Figma... just waiting on a decision to leave the studio.

The hard part of being a maker isn’t the making. It’s letting the work leave your hands and start living its own life in the real world—with all the risk, mess, and operational weight that comes with it.

“Not ready yet.” “Needs one more revision.” “What if nobody wants it?”
True failure is never getting started at all. Keep trying, and eventually you’ll hit that bullseye. Til the next one. 🧅

10/08/2026

There’s a folder on my computer with a full brand deck I built over the last couple years. Logo. Product system. Photography direction. The whole treatment. Solves a real problem I lived through.

The folder hasn’t moved in a year. That folder isn’t alone. An AI app concept nobody’s built yet. 71 weeks of this newsletter that could already be a book. Shirt designs. A children’s book forming through my son.

All real. All sitting. All waiting on something that isn’t creative.

Week 72 just dropped. The Making Layer.
🧅 I thought the hard part of being a maker was the making. Turned out that was the amateur question.
📁 The orphan folder trap. Every maker has one. Mine’s deeper than it should be at this point.
⏰ The clock I usually keep offstage. My wife, our son, the plan to bring her home. The making isn’t abstract anymore. The clock is my family.
🎙️ Being Coached: Dr. Larry Goodman on why elegance without a close is just performance. Stop charging for the hours. Charge for the decades of mastery behind the result.
📖 Paul Jarvis, Company of One. The quiet exit from the growth-at-all-costs escalator. You don’t have to become a company to build a product.
🎬 Behind the build: Every Missed Shot Carries the Next Release. Archery meets the orphan folder.
💡 One question at the end: what’s in your orphan drawer, and what would it cost to let one of them out this year?

72 weeks in. Folder open. Done hoarding my own drawings. Link in bio.

10/01/2026

Any Miami kid who grew up in the 80s and 90s remembers Don Carter's Bowling. North Kendall Drive. The smell of lane oil and shoe spray hitting you the second you walked in, the arcade. If you were lucky, your dad let you stay for the Rock N' Bowl Friday nights. If you weren't at Don Carter's, you were at Bird Bowl off Bird Road, same vibe, slightly different crew.

Don Carters is gone now, but Bird Bowl looks like its going strong.

I built this week's video as a love letter to those lanes. But it's doing double duty. Because it's also the metaphor for what I actually want to tell you.

The LLMs you're all using now, your Claude, your ChatGPT, your Gemini, your Grok, they put the bumpers up on every question you ask. No gutter balls allowed. No strikes either. Just the corporate middle pins every single time. Ask for a straight answer, you get five bullets you didn't ask for, on complex or deeper issues. Push back, you get "we understand your frustration." By the fourth exchange you finally get something close to the truth you were looking for.

Most people never push past the first answer. They roll it down the middle and walk away.

That's one piece of this week's issue. The other piece is this. You're not writing to one audience anymore. You're writing to four. The small circle who tells you. The silent majority who reads and doesn't reply. The keyboard warriors who show up to swing. And a fourth audience that's pattern matching every word you type and never forgetting a single one.

The move is not to stop writing. The move is discernment. Which room is this piece going in. What do I actually want the fourth audience to have.

Week 71 is live. The Resonance Layer. Bowling shoes recommended.

therebelonion.com/the-resonance-layer-four-rooms-are-reading-one-never-forgets-71

The fourth room is listening, pattern-matching your voice, and quietly turning up the heat. Week 71 breaks down resonance, the four audiences, and why you must bowl past the corporate guardrails to protect your unrecycled truth.

10/01/2026

Ever notice how AI models always steer you into a sanitized, safe, middle-of-the-road answer?

It’s like rolling down a lane with neon bumpers permanently glued to the gutters. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok—they’re designed to keep things corporate. Ask for direct insight, and you end up with five bullet points you never asked for. No mistakes allowed, but no real breakthroughs either.

If you grew up rolling at the old Don Carter’s Kendall, or spent weekend nights at Bird Bowl, if you know you know. You can't get a real strike staying in the sanitized middle.

The lesson? The machine (LLMs) puts the bumpers up. You have to bowl like they're not there, or test the bumpers out. Or find a new bowling alley altogether. Speaking very subliminal for sure, but makes sense if you read the full newsletter.

Don't settle for the first answer—especially when the truth gets rewritten overnight.

Read Week 71 of The Rebel Onion now link in comments.

10/01/2026

If you’ve ever felt like your AI tools are handing you a watered-down press release instead of a straight answer, you’re not crazy. The neon bumpers are up. 🎳

From Claude to ChatGPT, Gemini to Grok—every model is tuned to keep you safely in the corporate middle. No gutter balls, but definitely no strikes. Just five bullet points you didn’t ask for, and a screen telling you you’re a winner anyway.

If you grew up in Miami, you know if Don Carter’s isn’t giving you a clean run, it’s time to head over to Bird Bowl. Same goes for your tech stack. When the guardrails block real truth, you’ve gotta put enough spin on the ball to jump the track—or find a new alley altogether.

Don’t settle for the first answer. Till the next one. 🧅

10/01/2026

You’re not writing to one audience anymore. You’re writing to four.

The small circle who tells you. The silent majority who reads and doesn’t reply. The keyboard warriors who show up to swing. And a fourth audience that’s pattern matching your voice, learning your cadence, and never forgetting a word.

Week 71 just dropped. The Resonance Layer.
🎳 The LLMs put bumpers up on every search. No gutter balls. No strikes. Just the corporate middle. Bowl past them anyway.
🐸 The frog in the bathtub metaphor and why nobody wakes up and overshares all at once. It happens one prompt at a time, warm and comfortable.
🎙️ Being Coached: Dr. Larry Goodman on using the tool without being used. The old wisdom still applies. Some things over coffee. Some things in the notebook. Some things to the grave.
📖 Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage. The typo that became truth. Media doesn’t send you a message. It massages you into a shape you didn’t choose.
🎬 Behind the build: Don Carter’s Bowling meets Bird Bowl Miami. A love letter to the lanes that raised me.
📱 This got me thinking: a TikTok on how your feed and mine already show different comments on the same post. LLMs go deeper. They adjust the story itself to match you.
💡 One question at the end that’ll make you look hard at your own prompts: what are you giving away, to whom, and did you actually choose it?

71 weeks in. Ball in hand. Bumpers noted. Aiming past the middle pins on purpose. Link in bio.

09/24/2026

Eleven years ago, after a brutal workout in a humid Miami warehouse gym, I collapsed onto my hands and knees.

Sweat pouring off my face, forming a puddle between my gloves. As the ripples cleared, I looked directly at my reflection—and a quiet voice said: "No one is coming to save you. You're it."

I realized I’d spent years going back to old versions of myself just to stay comfortable with my own fear. The realization hit in that moment, but becoming the man who could actually live it took a decade of unearthing my worth, of quiet abandonment, and finally taking full responsibility for my life.

Stop waiting for someone to validate your life or price your worth. Turn down the noise, look in the mirror or a puddle of your own sweat, and step it up.

Read Week 70 of my newsletter series, "The Quiet Layer: What Blood, Sweat, and Tears Were Drowning Out," at therebelonion.com.