My Life is Dope & I Do Dope Shit
I'm sitting by a fire pit in Uluwatu, Bali, wrapped in a sarong, half-high on heat and frigid water. The place is called Atmos. Massive round steam-saunas built from local wood. Pools of varying temperatures scattered through the grounds, steam wafting, like stations of some pagan ritual. Live music played right next to a tea ceremony. A gong rings for at the next guided sauna session. Beautiful, fit people in various states of undress, moving between the heat and the cold with the quiet focus of monks who know the assignment.
I just came out of the cold plunge and my skin is buzzing. The fire is crackling. I sink into the space, tip my head back to see a mass of stars in the open sky, and it hits me — the thing that's been hitting me on repeat lately — a full-body awareness that I am exactly where I want to be. Floating just above my own life, looking down at the scene, heart swelling with something that feels a lot like peace.
And I think: My life is dope and I do dope shit.
This comes directly from a story Dave Chappelle tells about a young Kanye West attending an edit of the Chappelle Show. Mid-edit, Kanye gets a call.
Kanye to the caller:
"No, I can't"
[pause]
"Yeah, I'm at the edit, at the Dave Chappelle show, watching sketches that no one has seen before"
[pause]
"Because my life is dope and I do dope shit"
Opinion of 2026 Kanye aside, I absolutely love this story. The raw confidence. The presence of the moment to be a legend. The situational awareness of the significance of his experience. And Chappelle recognizing the gold of the story.
I’m turning 57 this week. I’ve been reflecting on my year and generally my state of mind lately. The Kanye story keeps coming up. If I’m honest, these days I feel very much like my life is dope and I do dope shit.
I'm not bragging. If anything, the sentiment comes wrapped in gratitude more than anything else. I am exactly where I want to be. And that's exactly when the dope feeling hits.
Which is wild, because this past year has been anything but smooth. A mix of major highs and lows that tested every part of me.
I started my 56th year by opening my long-awaited project for work. A realization of a 5-year vision that had to be dope. I was excited and terrified in the same moment. I leaned heavy on my decades of entrepreneurial experience and a healthy backlog of successes and failures. We opened and it went really well.
At the end of the summer I faced my fourth bout with kidney stones that lasted far too long, plagued my backpacking trip, and landed me in the hospital. Two naturally-passed 6mm stones later, I wasn't feeling very dope. I had to believe life would improve.
It did improve. Spending my fall following Radiohead in Europe was as dope as I can imagine. Madrid and Bologna are two of my favorite places and sharing the shows with some of my favorite people in both spots was blatantly the juice of life.
And then in the new year the pelvic floor prostate shit hit. You can read my Anal Retentive post to dig deeper if you dare. To be brief, six weeks of Foley catheters shoved up your junk is decidedly not dope. This was a scare that cut me to my core. My entire perspective shifted on health care, aging, and taking care of myself.
Which leads to the past two months. In response to the fuckery of the pelvis, I planned an impromptu wellness escape. I came to Bali to reconnect with my body. Daily yoga, sauna, swimming, paddling, walking, and aligning my psyche around the future that I want. Practicing a disciplined approach in a vacuum is cathartic and compelling. Carving new neural pathways to take home is super dope.
The key to interpreting all of this is to read the spaces in between. The challenges weren't the lessons. The opportunities that arose from them were. Suffer significant health challenges — focus on creating a better foundation for addressing and supporting yourself. Feeling sorry for myself would do nothing to better my life. So don't. And the good times aren't as much about the thing itself but the energy that circles around it. Much like Kanye at that edit, it wasn't so much about the Chappelle taping as it was his recognition of it.
So here's the takeaway and the wisdom I can share of my 57th year on this planet. You make your life dope. Your choices will lead you to seek out dope shit. The challenges you face are not setbacks, they are rocket fuel for growth and betterment. So welcome the difficulties, face the challenges, and recognize that forward movement requires letting go of the past. Seriously, what the fuck are you waiting for? Nobody is gonna live your life for you. Bad shit happens. Make hard decisions. Take big risks. Suck it up and make dope shit happen.
I just finished receiving a traditional bamboo tattoo from a third-generation artist on the island of Gili Air off Lombok. This is my last hurrah before I head to LA for my birthday and then home for the season. The simple symbol is a water icon we created to honor my connection to the sea. Growing up on an island, spending my childhood in the Atlantic. Landing in San Francisco and opening a paddle, kayak, and efoil business — water is my element. But more than the tattoo or the symbolism, it was so cool to meet Baba, the artist, hear his family story, and have the coolest tattoo process on earth. The payoff wasn’t only in the result, it was in the process, the experience and the awareness of what it all meant.
Just another of the many reasons I believe that my life is dope and I do dope shit.
