Agency
Here's what it actually means.
The place to be. The sound sofa at Collegium, Costa Mesa. A pen, an espresso, and sound.
My life encapsulated in those three words.
I don’t say that to be poetic. I say it because most people are waiting for permission to live like that. Permission from a schedule, a boss, a bank account, a version of success they read about in someone else’s caption. And they’re still waiting.
I’m not.
There’s a word I keep coming back to. Agency.
Spend enough time in entrepreneurship spaces and you’ll hear it tied to one thing. SMMA. Social media marketing agency. A business model that got packaged, productized, and handed to every 19 year old with a laptop. The word got borrowed and somewhere in that transaction it got hollowed out.
In its real form, agency is older than any business model. It’s a decision to hold the pen on your own life. To be the one writing the story rather than receiving it.
That’s a different thing entirely.
People spend a lot of energy looking for the formula. The right morning routine. The right content strategy. The right sequence of decision that produces a stable, fulfilling life.
Here’s what I’ve landed on. There isn’t one.
And that’s not a pessimistic take. It’s actually the most freeing thing I’ve ever accepted. No one. Not your closest friends, not even your mother who shared a body with you for nine months, knows the true you. The true way you think. The specific configuration of experiences and instincts and preferences that makes your pace different from everyone else’s.
That’s what makes the human experience so rich. The novelty. The imperfections. The ambiguity. They aren’t bugs. They’re the whole point.
So the pace you’re moving at, the one that looks slow to someone on the outside, the one that doesn’t match anyone’s five-year plan template. That’s not a lack of agency. That’s what agency actually looks like in practice.
Creatives understand this better than most.
What separates them isn’t talent. It’s that they physically or digitally speak out their thoughts and let the world respond. They risk embarrassment. Resources. Sometimes relationships. All because they pursued an idea and refused to let anyone shake it off them.
That takes resilience. It takes humility. And most importantly, it takes courage.
We talk a lot about the behaviors that give you the most leverage. The morning routine. The diet. The gym. All valid. But courage might be the mega-bang character trait that makes all of it mean something. The one that unlocks everything downstream. Career moves, creative risks, honest conversations, the decision to build something before you feel ready.
Go out. Move your body. And hold onto the idea you’ve been quietly sitting on.
That’s agency with legs.
Agency isn’t a business model. It’s not a content strategy or a five step framework someone sold you in a course. It’s Thursday afternoon with a pen. Moving at the pace your life actually calls for.
Keep stackin’.