Five Vulnerable Things: Vol. 30
On staying here, the plush toy spa, Martin Short, the cozy chair of depression, and mining your own life
Monsoon Season is a newsletter and podcast by meditation teacher and writer, Asa Yee. It lives at the intersection of culture, consciousness, and creativity. It is about the messy, beautiful, non-linear work of becoming. The courage to be seen. The belief that the most spiritual thing any of us can do is be vulnerable.
Hey, soul friend.
This is my 30th issue!!!
I spent most of this week offline. Away from my phone, away from work, away from the hum of constant accessibility. My partner and I spent some time at a lake house (but he made me promise to not watch the movie The Lake House) and I let myself arrive somewhere I rarely get to go. Not just being present. Actually feeling present.
And guess what? The world kept spinning without me, and everything was fine.
I did not intentionally record a podcast episode this week. I did not host a live meditation. We return to our regular rhythm next week, live meditation Monday the 18th, podcast episode drops Tuesday, breakdown newsletter Wednesday, and so on.
But first, thirty weeks of showing up to write. I am so incredibly proud of that. I am proud of who I am becoming through the writing, and the anchoring in consistency.
Sincerely from my heart, thank you for being here.
Let’s get into it.
1. You will never be here again
There is this idea in entrepreneurship and creative work that wherever you are right now is just a stepping stone to somewhere better. A phase to push through. A level to clear so you can finally arrive at the version of yourself that is ready to do the real work.
I want to gently, lovingly, tell you that is wrong.
Wherever you are right now, however sticky it is, however uncomfortable, however unfinished, is actually the most potent place you will ever create from. Because in a few years, when you have leveled up and pushed past this upper limit and built the thing you are trying to build, something happens. A quiet disassociation. The earlier version of you, the one that was scared and uncertain and figuring it out in real time, starts to become less accessible. You remember it but you cannot fully inhabit it anymore. And that version of you is the one that reaches people most deeply.
The person you can help most right now is not the person five steps ahead of you. It is the person standing exactly where you are standing today. And you can reach them in a way that your future more masterful self simply will not be able to. Because you are still inside it. You have not crossed over yet. You are still in the becoming.
Do not rush out of here. There are people who need you to stay a little longer.
2. The plush toy spa in Japan
In Yamanashi, Japan there is a spa that specializes in cleaning worn out, beloved, threadbare plush toys. People send their most treasured stuffed animals to be gently washed and restored. And this place exists. It is a real business. It is thriving.
I think about this whenever I start to believe there is no room for what I am building.
I have watched a woman on the internet pop popcorn kernels with a hair strainer and amass millions of followers. I have watched the most absurd, the most random, the most inexplicable things find their people online. And I say this not to be dismissive of it but to remind you and myself that if there is room for all of that, there is absolutely room for the thing you have been quietly tending and overthinking and talking yourself out of sharing.
The people who hold back the most are almost always the ones with the most to offer. The intellectual ones. The intentional ones. The ones who care so deeply that the caring itself becomes a kind of paralysis. They ruminate and overanalyze and convince themselves the world is too saturated, too noisy, too full of other voices to ever need theirs.
But here is what I keep anchoring into. It is not about how many people you reach. It is about who you become in the reaching. The self mastery that happens when you show up anyway, when you keep sharpening the blade and chopping wood and carrying water, that is the sculpture. The people you help along the way are the extraordinary bonus.
There is a spa in Japan washing stuffed animals and it has found its people. Your work will find its people too. But only if you send it out into the world.
3. BLMS: Be like Martin Short
I have adored Martin Short since he played the most gloriously unhinged French wedding planner in Father of the Bride and I didn’t think it was possible to love him more. And then I watched his Netflix documentary this week called Marty, Life is Short.
Everyone interviewed, Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, Steven Spielberg, kept saying the same thing in different ways. Martin Short is exceptionally good at living. Not just at performing or creating or being funny. At actually living his life. His priorities were always clear. Family first. Joy first. Creative work done with full presence and zero attachment to outcomes.
A lot of Short’s films commercially flopped. And there is a scene where John Mulaney is talking about a show he was producing that got canceled and he went to Martin Short for counsel and Short just looked at him and said something like: 98% of the job is failure. That is not a reflection of your talent. That is just the nature of the work.
And he said it without grief. Without apology. Like it was simply the weather.
What struck me most is that Marty has had extraordinary longevity in an industry that is known for it’s lack of sustainability. And I think it is precisely because he found the joy in the process and refused to let the outcome be the point. Once the film was made, once the song was recorded, once the work was sent into the world, it was no longer his. Rick Rubin says the same thing in The Creative Act.
The making is yours. The receiving belongs to the world.
I want to live more like Martin Short. I want to find the joy in the making and release the rest without ceremony. I want failure to feel like weather. Utterly out of my hands.
4. Depression is a cozy comfy chair
I have to tell you something that I shared with my partner this week that surprised even me when I said it out loud.
I was sleep deprived and full of doubt and I said to him: I think I am actually more comfortable being depressed. Like it is familiar. Like it is where I go when things feel uncertain, the same way some people reach for a bag of Cheetos or turn on a 90’s sitcom they have already seen thirty times. Depression is my cozy chair. It knows the shape of me. It has been waiting there my whole life and it never asks anything of me except to stay.
What was strange about saying that out loud was that I could hear myself saying it from the outside. I was the observer of the thought rather than inside the thought. And I realized in that moment that depression is not who I am. It is a place I go. A habit. A very old and very practiced response to fear and doubt that my nervous system learned a long time ago and has never quite unlearned.
The uncomfortable thing for me is not the depression. It is the joy. Staying joyful for extended periods of time is what feels dangerous. Like something will be taken away. Like I have not earned it. Like it is not safe to stay up on my feet for too long.
I share this not because I have figured it out but because I think some of you are sitting in that same chair right now. And I want you to know that noticing it, just noticing, is enough to start loosening its hold. You are not the chair. You are the one who chose to sit down. And you can choose to stand up too. Even if it is uncomfortable at first. Especially then. Because like all things, your feet will get us to it.
5. Entrepreneurship does not give you permission to be free
I thought when I left my corporate job that I was choosing freedom. And in many ways I was. But what I have been slowly realizing is that freedom is not a destination you arrive at when you quit. It is something you have to actively build and protect and choose every single day.
This week I was on vacation and I still caught myself mining my own life for content. A beautiful moment at the lake and I was already thinking about whether it would make a good thumbnail. A conversation with my partner and I was mentally filing it away for a future newsletter. Even in rest I was working. Even in joy I was extracting.
I had to actively put my phone down. Delete Substack from my home screen. Text friends to say I was going offline and that I would not be reading messages even if they came in. And even then, the permission to truly stop took a few days to arrive.
So many entrepreneurs I know complain about working nonstop and frame it as just what it takes. But we forget that we chose this. We forget that the grind is not a requirement of the work. It is a habit we brought with us from the old life we left.
The freedom we are building requires us to actually practice it. To schedule it. To protect it. To communicate it to the people around us without guilt.
You are allowed to be offline. You are allowed to stop mining your life for a moment and just live it. The work will be richer for it. You will be richer for it.
Minutes meditated so far this year: 2,485 minutes 🧘🏽♀️
About Me
I’m Asa. I am a Bangladeshi-American meditation teacher, writer, and podcast host.
I believe vulnerability is the most powerful thing we have. Not as a tactic, but as the actual portal to building a life and a business that feels like yours. The more honest we are about who we are and what we struggle with, the more we give other people permission to do the same. That is the whole philosophy behind everything I create.
Born and raised in New York City. Living in Charleston. I am a cinephile, a mango connoisseur, and a chai addict. So glad you are here — make yourself at home. 🤎
Want to go deeper? Here’s how:
🌧 Interested in 1:1 coaching? I offer a 6-month Mentorship for solopreneurs. Book a connection call and let’s have a chat about where you are, and what you are building.
📍 Find the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (search: Monsoon Season).
Stay soft,
Asa