Why I started this newsletter (and what it's really about)
I'll start with a confession.
I spent years chasing the version of success that looked good on paper. Good career. Good income. Respected by the right people. And I got a fair amount of it. What I didn't get — at least not automatically — was the feeling I thought would come with it.
You know the feeling I mean. The deep, quiet sense that life is good. That you're actually here for it. That the days add up to something worth having.
That gap — between what I achieved and what I actually felt — is what eventually sent me down a different road. Less about doing more, more about paying attention differently.
My first book, The Input Effect, was about that shift. The core idea: your life is largely shaped by what you let into it. The information, the people, the habits, the environments. Get the inputs right and the outputs take care of themselves.
That book changed how I think. But it left a question unanswered. A bigger one.
What are we actually optimizing for?
This newsletter — and the book I'm writing now — is my attempt to answer that.
The new book is called Inner Peace Is the New Rich. The argument is simple: the beautiful life is not behind a paywall. It's behind a presence wall. The things that actually produce joy, contentment, aliveness, love, awe — they're not scarce. They're not expensive. They're not reserved for people who've figured something out that you haven't.
They're just hiding where most of us forget to look. In this moment. In full attention. In the small, unrepeatable things we keep walking past.
I live in Saint-Hippolyte, Quebec — a small town north of Montreal, on a lake, surrounded by forest. I watch a great blue heron fish the same marsh every morning. Hummingbirds show up at my feeder every spring like they own the place. And I've learned more about presence from those birds than from most books I've read.
I'm not a monk. I'm not off the grid. I read the New York Times with my coffee and I find AI genuinely thrilling. I'm a regular person who got curious about what actually makes life feel worth living — and then got serious about it.
That's what this newsletter is. The thinking, the writing, the honest reckoning that goes into the book. Some weeks that's an essay. Some weeks it's a question I'm sitting with. Occasionally it'll be something I got completely wrong and had to rethink.
If that sounds like your kind of conversation, you're in the right place.
More soon.
Terry
