JETS JOURNAL - #065
January 21, 2025
Hi All!
Here is your weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.
True Wealth
During my life I’ve met some of the richest and poorest people on the planet, and when I say this I literally mean I’ve been the penthouses of crypto billionaires and shared meals with beggars in India. So, I’ve seen a huge part of the spectrum of wealth, and am coming to my own newfound realisations about what true wealth to me is.
Previously, before I found the confidence in myself to start pursuing the things I was interested in, I always told myself I needed to have X, Y, Z, before I could start, and typically those things usually revolved around money.
I would often tell myself, I needed to have a certain level of financial freedom, before I could give myself the permission to live life. However, I soon realised, the goal post was only getting further away from me, as I began mingling with different circles.
It wasn’t until recently, that I’ve felt an intrinsic shift inside of me, that’s come to the realisation that I’m already wealthy. And while this wealth might not appear in the form of traditional success markers like status objects, I feel it in the freedom I have when I walk the street. I feel it when I speak with friends, who share themselves with me. I feel it when I’m in the quiet presence of my family. And I feel it when I get to unconditionally create from a place joy.
The wealth I’ve opened my eyes too, feels like the kind of thing I was seeking the entire time. It’s ironic that what I was looking for so desperately, was with and around me the entire time.
For anyone who wants to start
Here is a great take I found on X last week:
What you lose, is exactly what you gain
A core belief of mine is that with every win there is a loss, and with every loss there is a win. I personally believe that nothing that happens in life is either good, or bad—it just depends on the framing we apply to the situation.
For a more concrete example, you see it all the time with celebrities, who wish they could be invisible, they wish they could travel to a foreign country, and get to experience culture first hand without being swamped with attention. Yet on the other end of the spectrum you have the people like myself, who often daydream about the glitz and glamor, and what it might be like to be fawned over by thousands of people.
When in reality both people are just looking for the things they don’t have, because that’s what we do, all of us, and I still do it all the time. However, I often try to reframe my situation and appreciate what I do have, because there’s a lot there.
LA Book Haul
When I was in LA, I bought a lot of used books. Here are some of the titles I picked up:
- The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
- The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
- Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
- The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
- Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
- Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
- Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Next by Michael Chrichton
- Post Office by Charles Bukowski
- Welcome to The Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
- All The Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
- Naked by David Sedaris
- Cathedral by Raymond Carver
- Stoner by John Williams
- The Largesse of The Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Cosmopolis by Don DeLilio
- To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
- The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
If you’re interested in what I’m reading, check out my reading log on my website.
A Quote I Liked
“The thing is, never to be too anxious. Everything comes in due time” -Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Hope everyone enjoys their week.
Love,
Jet Williams