So, the fact that you are here, that you have read every chapter, sat with every challenge, and kept going, that matters, and do not let anyone, including yourself, tell you otherwise.

Seven days is not the finish line, but it is proof that you can do this. Now, I’d like to tell you what happens after the first week of sobriety that nobody prepares you for, it gets loud.

And I’m not talking about external pressures only, I’m also talking about the volume within, because you removed the thing that was turning the volume down, and now, all the stuff it was covering up is getting its voice back…

1. Old feelings.

2. Old memories.

3. The things you have not thought about in years that show up at two in the morning like they have been waiting for an appointment.

This is not a sign that something is wrong with you, or that you’re losing your mind; this is your mind and body doing what they are supposed to do when you stop suppressing them. They’re speaking to you, and it’s been a while since they’ve been able to, so let them be loud.

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Do not reach for a distraction, do not grab your phone, and scroll until the feeling passes. Instead, sit in the noise for a few minutes and let yourself feel what comes up. You have been training yourself for years not to “hear you,” and that “self-conditioning” is what we are undoing.

Again, I remember my first week without a drink feeling like I had turned up the contrast on everything. I couldn’t sleep, but when I did, I started to dream again; colors were brighter, I was more creative with writing, and my emotions were swinging like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball.

Happy moments felt more real, hard moments hit harder, and I did not have the buffer I was used to, so it was just an intense ride where I felt it, processed it, sometimes endured it, and then learned how to handle it. The first time I sat with the really hard feelings without alcohol and came out the other side intact, that changed something in me, for the better.

I realized I was stronger than the feeling.

That point right there, being stronger than the thing you’ve got to hear and face, is the most important thing you can learn in your first week. Not that you do not need the drink, not that life is better sober (though it is), but that you can feel the hard thing and survive it. The lesson is that the emotion will rise and it will fall, and you will still be standing when it does. Most drinkers never learn this because they never give themselves the chance.

You are learning it right now.

Here is what else is happening in your body and your brain this week that you should know about. Your dopamine system is recalibrating as alcohol hijacks the reward pathway in your brain, flooding it with dopamine in ways that normal life cannot compete with in the short term. When you remove it, everything feels a little flat at first; food is less exciting, socializing feels harder, and the things that used to bring you small joy feel muted.

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This is a temporary “purgatory” you’re in while your brain adjusts its baseline. Give it time, and the things that bring you joy will come back, and when they do, they will feel more real than anything that came out of a bottle.

You have put in one week. That is real. That is yours.

Your Day 7 Sober-Challenge:

Write a letter to yourself from Day 31.

Not who you hope to be, but who are you becoming based on the work you have already done this week?

What has this person learned? What has he or she let go of? What does Day 31 insert your name, want the Day 7 version of you to know right now?

Write it, seal it if you want, and read it again at the end of the month.

- Zac

PS: You just proved you can do hard things for seven days straight. If you're a man who's ready to take what you're building here and put it toward something bigger, 31 Days to Masculinity is the next 30 days.

Same format, same daily commitment, built specifically for men who are done sleepwalking through life and ready to show up differently; at home, in the mirror, and everywhere else that counts.

One month, one decision, get the book here: https://amzn.to/3ObTpov

It did not judge you or send you a warning; it just adapted, the incredible way that the human body does, doing its best to function inside the environment you gave it, but “adapting” is not the same as being optimized.

Here is what alcohol has been doing to you physically while you were busy not thinking about it.

It has been stealing your sleep

Not just cutting it short, but fragmenting the deep sleep your brain needs to process emotion, consolidate memory, and regulate mood. You thought you slept well after a few drinks because you fell asleep fast. You didn’t “sleep well,” you sedated yourself, which is a completely different thing.

It has been working against your body’s ability to recover.

Every workout you did while drinking regularly, you were doing at a fraction of the capacity you could have been operating at. Alcohol disrupts protein synthesis, spikes cortisol, slows fat burning, and dehydrates muscle tissue.

There’s nothing wrong with your body, and the aches/pains aren’t entirely due to age; you have been fighting yourself every time you stepped into the gym after a night of drinking.

It has been taxing your liver, your gut, your hormones, and your mental health in ways that are quiet enough that you stopped noticing them because you had no baseline for comparison.

You did not know how good you could feel because you had never given your body a long enough window without alcohol to find out.

I found out.

When I went sober in July 2020, the first two weeks were interesting. I didn’t sleep the first three days, and my body had been running on a certain chemistry for twenty years, so when the formula of my routine changed, my body did some changing too.

• Sleep was strange (I started dreaming again).

• Moods were unpredictable (I started feeling way more emotions)

• Memory was noticeably improving (It has continued to improve to the present day)

I started waking up before my alarm and not hating it, I started finishing workouts and feeling like I had accomplished something, and I started having nights with my family where I was fully present, not partially there and partially somewhere else, and that felt good.

I noticed the low-level fog I had been living in for years was lifting; I didn’t even know it was there until it was gone.

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Here is what the research says happens to your body when you stop drinking:

1. Within 72 hours, your sleep quality begins to improve

2. Within one week, your liver starts clearing, and your hydration normalizes.

3. Within two weeks, your skin starts to change.

4. Within one month, your mental clarity sharpens, your energy levels stabilize, and your liver function significantly improves.

5. Within three months, the cognitive fog that most drinkers live inside starts to clear in ways that are difficult to describe unless you have experienced it.

Think about what happens when you get sick…

You fight through it, you rest, you recover, and if everything goes right, you end up back where you started; “Back to normal.”

That’s the best-case scenario for most illnesses; you’re just trying to get back to baseline.

Sobriety doesn’t work that way…

When you put down the bottle and do the real work that follows, you don’t just recover back to who you were before you started drinking; you come out the other side as someone better than that person ever was.

Life is clearer, you are more present and capable, and you become a version of yourself that never existed before, because the work it takes to get sober builds things in you that a comfortable version of you could never have manifested. People are fighting just to get back to even; recovery takes you beyond that level.

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Your body wants to heal, and it is not waiting for your permission; it just needs you to get out of the way.

You are now on Day 6.

Your body is already starting the work; you may not feel it yet, and depending on your history, you may feel worse before you feel better, especially if you were drinking heavily. Understand that your body is recalibrating, let it do what it needs to do, without the booze involved. It’s an important note to keep in mind that you cannot mistake the discomfort of healing for evidence that sobriety is not working.

Your Day 6 Sober-Challenge

Spend ten minutes today in silence: No phone, no screen, no podcast in your ear.

Sit with your body, notice what it feels like, what is tight, what is restless, what is tired, and do not try to fix any of it.

This is not meditation; it’s an inventory of the physical temple that is you. You are getting familiar with the body you have been living in, many of you for the first time in a long time.

Finally, write down one physical thing you are looking forward to getting back as you continue through these 31 days.

- Zac

PS: If this series is hitting home, you might be ready for the next step. 31 Days to Masculinity is a 30-day framework for the man who is done drifting and ready to build something real. Sobriety clears the path; this book helps you figure out where to walk.

Grab it here: https://amzn.to/3ObTpov

But, they aren’t as crucial to long-term sobriety as the cornerstone of your addiction; underneath everything else we can discuss on the subject, there is something that was there before the first bottle was ever opened.

Something happened to you.

Maybe it was one thing (neglect for example), maybe it was a hundred small things over a long time (like frustrations of living in poverty). Maybe you have a name for it, and maybe you don’t; maybe you have talked about it in therapy, and maybe you have never said it out loud to anyone…

It is there, and alcohol did not create it; alcohol found it and offered to cover it up, at the expense of “the toll” (more alcohol) being paid.

I have a few answers to this…

I was six years old when my mother died, and then I was seven, eight, and nine without closure, understanding, or improvement in knowing who I was and where I belonged. I kept growing up, but that thing inside me did not grow with me; that trauma just got darker, that weight of a child who lost the one person who was supposed to be permanent, the one person whose job was to make the world feel safe was ripped away, literally overnight.

When the world does not feel safe at six years old, you find ways to manage that. You get angry, you act out, you cry and get emotional, you check out of school, and maybe you move through life with one hand always on the door, ready to leave before something leaves you.

NOTE: I would never take my life, as the one thing my mother’s suicide taught me more than anything else, is how fucked up it is for you to leave, and everyone is left behind to pick up the pieces. I’d never do that to my wife, kids, family, or friends…

When you are thirteen, and someone hands you something that makes all of that go quiet, even for a few hours, you do not question it, you just drink.

I was not drinking because I was having a good time, though sometimes it looked that way. I was not drinking because it tasted good; I was drinking because there was a version of myself I did not want to spend time with, and alcohol made him easier to avoid. He was the kid in the hallway, the one asking if his mother was going to be okay, the one who never got a real answer.

I drank him away for twenty years.

And here is the thing about that; it worked. That is the honest truth that nobody in recovery wants to say out loud, alcohol works. Not forever, and not without a cost, but in the short term, in the moment, when the noise was loud, and the weight was heavy, and I needed to get through the night, it worked great.

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If it did not work, nobody would ever drink more than once.

The problem is that it only ever worked on the surface. Like pulling the batteries out of a fire alarm, the screeching went quiet, but that fire burned on. When the booze wore off, the damage would still be there, the fire would still be burning, and the thing underneath never went away; it remained unresolved, ready to set off the alarms again, and again, and again…

The trauma just sat there, patient, waiting for the alcohol to wear off, and every morning it was right where I left it, and every morning, I looked forward to a little more of that sweet liquid silence-maker to cover it back up. Except in my story, and that of millions of others, more traumas were piled on top, and so more poison was needed to mask the alarms.

In a way, calling alcohol poison makes the most sense, because you really are trying to kill that part of yourself. You may not be completely suicidal, but there is a part of you that you want to die, and alcohol is a way to temporarily murder that part, while letting the rest of you “live”.

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That is how the cycle runs.

You don’t break the cycle by gritting your teeth and white-knuckling through the cravings; you break it by going down into the thing you were drinking away and dealing with it directly. That is the work.

• Not the 31 days.

• Not the 10 steps.

• Not the challenges

• Not the chapter a day…

Those are the structures, but the work is what you do when you sit down with the thing you have been running from and decide to stop running.

I am not asking you to do all of that today, but I am asking you to start getting honest about what it is.

Your Day 5 Sober-Challenge

Every time you feel a craving today, do not fight it. Instead, stop and ask yourself one question:

1. What am I feeling right now that I do not want to feel?

Write down what comes up; not the craving, I want you to focus on the feeling underneath the craving.

Do this every single time today, and by the end of the day, you will have a list, and that list is the beginning of the real work.

- Zac

PS: If you’re a man looking for a complete transformation, focused on all areas on top of addiction, check out my republished 31 day program, ‘31 Days to Masculinity’: GRAB YOUR COPY HERE

And sure, we can agree that technically those decisions were yours, I won’t even pretend otherwise, but you did not build this thing in a vacuum.

You were handed a culture in life, and that culture told you, from the time you were old enough to understand advertising, that alcohol was what happy people drank, that it was what successful people drank, and that it was what men drank after a hard day, what women deserved after a hard week, what families did at holidays, what friends did to celebrate, what people did when something went wrong, and what everyone needed to take “the edge” off.

The culture did not hand you a bottle; it did something far more sinister, and much more effective than that; It made frequent, often excessive, alcohol consumption feel normal.

Drinking until you puke was expected for the partiers, holding your liquor was a badge you earned, and choosing not to drink made you feel like the weird one, as everyone else was doing it and having a great time.

When you look at it now, do you see how surgically precise the marketing has been? There’s no other substance that is as destructive, and yet hailed as an essential component to society, quite like alcohol is. It’s an addictive, cancer-causing, problem-amplifying poison, and it’s drank in church, shown on TV, and drunks are in front of children, and this is all considered “normal”.

I lived inside that culture for twenty years before I started questioning it.

In the Navy, the culture was not just present; it was loud. Drinking was woven into the fabric of every moment outside of work, and it was ramped up upon returning from deployments, getting promotions, and saying goodbye to friends. We drank to celebrate, we drank to mourn, we drank because we had been sober at sea for months, and being back on land with money in our pockets with nothing to do was a green light.

There was no one to pull us aside and ask if we were okay, there was no conversation about what we had felt, seen, or what we were carrying; there was a bar, and there were brothers, and for one night at least, that felt like enough.

I am not blaming the Navy; it was the best thing to happen to me, but my early adult life was spent in that culture. It’s the same as why I am not blaming my family; they were caught up in the loop, too. And for you, your version may not have deployments in it; you may have drank because you lived in a small town and there was nothing else to do, so that became your “hobby”.

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To be honest, I am not blaming the commercials, the culture of American society, or the way alcohol has been sold to us since we were old enough to watch television…

I am pointing at these things because you need to see it; you need to become aware that alcohol was pushed onto you in every country song, every movie, every sports commercial, every life milestone, and every everything you’ve been brought up in. How could it not have crept its way into your life?

I need you to be aware of this, because here is what happens when you try to get sober without understanding the culture you are swimming in…

You make it in a few days, maybe until that first Friday, and then you go to a barbecue, or a wedding, or a work function/”happy hour”(check the name), and the culture surrounds you again, and it hands you a drink and says, “What’s the big deal? Everyone is doing it, you deserve it; just one...” And you fold, not because you are weak, but because you never identified the threats in the water you have been swimming in your entire life.

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The system is not designed to help you quit; the system is designed to keep you buying…

Big Alcohol has run the most effective marketing campaign in the history of consumer products. It’s impressive how they have tied their product to every emotion people experience:

• Joy

• Grief

• Love

• Boredom

• Victory

• Defeat

• Stress

They have made it a character in every story you have ever watched on screen, and they’ve made the person who does not drink the strange one, the boring one, the one you cannot trust.

I wrote about this once, the idea that “you cannot trust a man who does not drink.” Think about how deep that goes. We have been conditioned to associate sobriety with suspicion and alcohol with authenticity. We have been sold the idea that the bottle is what connects us, as if it is where truth lives, and that the person who turns it down is hiding something.

That conditioning is not an accident; that is a marketing strategy, and they’ve spent billions of dollars to keep you living inside that lie.

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None of these excuse the choices you made, but I hope this chapter helps you understand why this happened, and softens how hard you are on yourself about what you’ve done.

You were not broken; you were targeted, and now you are choosing to opt out. That is not a weakness; that is one of the clearest-eyed decisions a person can make, so see the culture, and leave it.

Your Day 4 Sober-Challenge

Write down your top three drinking environments; think of the places, situations, or people that made drinking feel automatic.

Then, next to each one, write what you will do instead when that situation comes up in the next 31 days.

You are not avoiding your life; you are showing up to it differently, so plan for that now, before the moment hits.

If you fail to prepare, then prepare to fail (again).

- Zac

The first drink is never about addiction; half the people I’ve spoken to don’t even know alcohol is addictive (it is very addictive). People’s intro to alcohol is often about relief, belonging, or being a teen in a world that does not make sense, and you’re searching for anything that makes it feel like it does.

All of those examples were me…

I was thirteen when I remember making the decision to drink with the intent to get “fucked up”. It wasn’t a party; it was me being curious. Alcohol was already in the house. I viewed it as something that made people happier; it was already woven into every celebration and loss I had ever witnessed in the lives of the adults around me.

Drinking was not something I discovered; it was something I inherited.

I think my mother’s suicide, feelings of abandonment, moving to a new home, suffering SA, and much more were, at 13 years old, too much trauma for my brain to handle, and the unprocessed traumas found an escape…

When you can’t handle the terrible events happening in your life, what you do is you just carry it around, quietly, in the background of everything, like a sound you have heard so long you stop noticing it is there, but it’s always lurking, just behind the mask you’ve built. But when you find something that turns the volume down, you reach for it every time it gets loud again.

I grew up in a house that is like most middle-class houses in America; Happy? Drink. Celebrating? Drink. Grieving? Drink. Stressed? Drink. It was not a character flaw in the people around me; it was the culture. It was what adults did, what men did, and when you grow up watching something long enough, you do not question it; you just wait until you are old enough to join in.

I did not wait that long.

When you have that first drink at such a young age, there is no moment where you feel yourself crossing a line; you just feel better, the noise gets quieter, and the weight gets lighter. The secret screaming version of yourself that you drag around gets a little easier to carry, and your brain, which is too young, files that away under “Alcohol equals relief.”

That equation gets written into your operating system before you are old enough to question it, and it runs in the background for years before you even know it is there.

By the time I was in high school, drinking was not something I did on weekends; it was something I did whenever I could. I was sent to “Scared Straight” in middle school, stayed back as a Freshman, spending five years in high school, and somehow I graduated and joined the Navy (The best decision of my life).

I struggled in school, not because I was stupid, but because I was checked out, angry, and lost. While most kids were going through “growing pains” as teens, I was carrying a weight I had never been given the tools to put down. The school system had no idea what to do with me; they didn’t know the secrets I kept, and honestly, I had no idea what to do with myself either, so I drank.

To bring it back to my best decision ever, I joined the Navy at nineteen, and while I learned how to channel all the energy I had, I also walked straight into a culture that had turned drinking into a sport.

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We worked hard, we partied hard, we deployed, we saw things, we experienced leaving families behind, we came back, we drank, and it was the reward, the release, and how a group of men who had been operating on adrenaline, monsters, and discipline for months came back down to something that felt like normal. Nobody questioned the drunken sailor; it was who we were.

I fit right in.

The problem was not that I drank; the problem was why I drank. Every single person around me was drinking for the same surface reasons of unwinding, celebrating, connecting, but underneath my reason was something older and heavier that none of those drinks were ever going to touch.

I did not know that yet, so I kept reaching for the bottle, wondering why the relief never lasted. I became the Navy drunk who out-drank the drunks.

I share my story to show you what it is I want you to think about today, Your drinking started somewhere, too.

Not the first sip, but the first reason; the environment that made it normal, and the feeling that was solved. The age you were when you learned that alcohol was the answer is a part of that story.

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Most people never go back and look at that moment; they start their sobriety from today and wonder why it does not stick. It doesn’t stick because the root is still in the ground; we are going back to the root, find that, and the true healing process can occur.

Your Day 3 Sober-Challenge

Write down the earliest memory you have of alcohol being present in your life. Not your first drink necessarily, but the first time you remember alcohol existing in your world.

How old were you? Who was there? What was the feeling in the room?

Then answer the question, “What feeling were you chasing the first time you drank?”

Those two things together are the beginning of your story, and you cannot rewrite a story you have never read. Take some time, and go back into your life, chapter by chapter, until you find the first one with alcohol in it.

- Zac

Go ahead.

Because if you’re holding this book, there is a solid chance that that sentence (“I can stop whenever I want”) has lived in your head for years, and every time someone got close to the truth about your drinking, that was the line you reached for…

I can stop whenever I want.

It is the most common lie in the history of addiction, and the reason it works so well is that it sounds reasonable, as it sounds like control, and like the kind of thing a person with a problem would never say, which is exactly why people with problems say it all the time.

I said it for years…

I said it after the blackouts.

I said it after the fights.

I said it after waking up on the floor or in my own bed with no memory of how I got there. I said it in the Navy when drinking was just what we did; we were young men, at war, and we needed to vent some of the pressure that comes with living that life, in that environment…

I said it when I was thirteen years old, sneaking bottles out of my family’s cabinet, and I said it at thirty-three when I realized I’d somehow created a life where I actually did have something to lose.…

I can stop whenever I want.

Here is the thing about that lie, it is not just something you say to other people. It is something you say to yourself, over and over, until you believe it the way you believe the sun comes up in the morning. It becomes part of your operating system, and once it’s in there, it starts running in the background of every decision you make.

You don’t ask for help because you “don’t need it,” you can stop whenever you want. You don’t tell your love the truth because you can stop whenever you want. You don’t read sober content, or accept the invitation to the sober meeting, or answer the honest question from the friend who’s watching you disappear, because you can stop whenever you want.

(This part might sting a little)

The lie doesn’t just protect the drinking, it protects you from having to face what the drinking is protecting you from.

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And that is where it gets interesting.

Because underneath “I can stop whenever I want“ is another lie, a quieter one, one you probably haven’t said out loud yet, and that lie sounds like this, “If I stop, I won’t know how to function, because the alcohol masks the pain.“

That is the real one; that truth right there is the truth and thought that’s worth pulling apart.

Alcohol became your social lubricant because you were insecure and didn’t want to be seen or heard. It became the thing that made the room easier to walk into, the silence less unbearable, and the version of yourself that showed up to the party feel like someone people actually wanted around. It became the off switch for the part of your brain that wouldn’t shut up about everything you hadn’t dealt with. It wasn’t just a drink, it was a system that solved problems; alcohol let you stop worrying and remembering, but nobody told you that the more you used it, the more it took from you, and you never worried about losing yourself, and you stopped remembering how to be happy without it it; you entered a world where you only felt good when you felt nothing at all, except the crisp drink, that made the noise go flat, and you returned to the sweet relief from life, “here,” but not.

This is not me telling you that you are weak or broken, this is me telling you that you turned alcohol into a coping habit, and it worked, but now you are being asked to tear it down before you know what you will build in its place, and tha tmeans you won’t know how to cope, at least not at first, and that is terrifying; I know it because I lived it.

But here is what I need you to understand before Day 3.

The lie you told yourself, “I can stop whenever I want,” is not the enemy; the lie is a symptom. It exists because something underneath it was a you that needed protecting. Your job over the next 30 days is not to beat yourself up for believing it; your job is to get honest enough to find out what it was protecting you from.

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You cannot fix what you refuse to see, and you cannot see that which you refuse to admit exists.

So today, we take the lie off the table…

Admitting to an underlying issue does not fix it, and admitting to a problem does not need to be accompanied by shame. I’m asking that just for today, just long enough to ask the question the lie was built to prevent, that you give yourself permission to accept that maybe you can’t stop because you haven’t yet accepted, this harmless habit has become a part of your identity, and a method to handle the things you don’t want to face in life. That acceptance opens you up to answering this question…

What are you actually afraid would happen if you stopped?

Your Day 2 Sober-Challenge

Finish this sentence, and be brutal about it:

“I kept telling myself I could stop whenever I wanted because if I admitted I couldn’t, I would have to face...“

Write whatever comes after that; don’t clean it up or try to make it sound good…

The only person who has to read it is you.

That sentence is the first crack in the wall.

- Zac

Books like this don’t usually end up in the hands of the casually curious. Those people are browsing sci-fi, world records, cookbooks, or something with a motivational quote on the cover. Even the weird books get glanced at, but not bought, because you don’t want to be seen holding something that might say too much about where you’re at.

So why this book?

Were you curious about what an addict goes through? Did you see my face on the back cover and think I looked like someone worth listening to? Or did something in the description hit different, words written in a way that made something stir inside a locked part of your mind, like a key that worked where so many others had failed?

Whatever brought you here, you’re here, and we are in this together.

It’s Day 1, and right out of the gate, I want you to know that I am hoping you make it to Day 31. Beyond that is your choice, but Day 1, that’s an “us” choice. I’d like us to work together for the next 31 days, though I know that feels like a long way off right now. So let’s not look that far. Let’s just work on Day 1, figure out what brought you to this moment, and then maybe we can show up together for Day 2 as well.

My name is Zachary Small (I go by Zac)

You can find me on the socials listed inside this book. If at any point you want to reach out and work through this together, send the DM. Just like that, you’ve got an accountability partner to bounce things off of and get your questions answered. I mean that. I’m not a brand. I’m a person, and I have been exactly where you are sitting right now.

Zac’s Socials:

Zac’s FB
Zac’s IG
Zac’s X

So why did you start this?

Were you tired of being tired? Did something explode, a night where you lost your mind on someone you love and watched their face change the way it does when something breaks? Are you broke and finally doing the math on what sobriety would put back in your pocket?

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Was it a health scare? Your kids? A partner who told you it was them or the bottle? Did you wreck your reputation? Get a DUI?

Look at all the ways alcohol tears things down, and then look at how it is sold to us. Advertised as fun, normal, and practically a personality in every movie, show, sporting event, and commercial on television. The contrast is hard to ignore once you start seeing it.

And once you’ve found the surface reason you’re here, I want to go one level deeper with you.

Why did you let it get this far?

I’m not asking that to hurt you. I’m asking it because nobody else in your life is going to. Your friends tiptoed around it. Your family either enabled it or gave up trying to talk to you about it. And every resource you’ve come across before this probably handed you a hotline number and a breathing exercise and called it help - I’m not doing that.

You let it get this far because, at some point, alcohol was working. It was taking the edge off something real. It was filling a gap that nothing else was touching. It was making the room easier to be in, making the silence less loud, making the version of you that showed up to the party feel like someone people wanted around. I know because that was me, too.

But here is what nobody told you when it stopped working. The drinking stayed the same size. Your life got smaller around it.

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That is the truth most people never sit long enough to feel. Alcohol didn’t grow into a problem; you grew, and it didn’t. You started wanting more, building more, becoming more, and every time you reached for the bottle, you were choosing the old version of yourself over the new one, the one trying to get out of this cycle.

That person trying to get out is why you’re holding this book.

I’m not here to be nice to you; nice doesn’t save lives. I’m here to be real with you, because real is the only thing that ever worked for me, and I believe it’s the only thing that’s going to work for you too.

Thirty more days. Let’s go…

Your Day 1 Sober-Challenge

Write down two things.

1. The reason you told yourself you picked up this book.

2. The real reason. The one underneath that. The one you haven’t said out loud yet.

They might be the same. They probably aren’t. Either way, write both down and sit with the difference. Nobody has to see it but you.

If you want, you can share your message with me on any of my socials. Only paying subscribers can comment on TDDN posts, but you can hit me up anywhere.

- Zac Small

PS: Tomorrow is Day 2, see you then.

Life didn’t slow down; I had to reprioritize some of my work because my schedule did the opposite, it exploded with events, milestones, and projects and the newsletter took the greatest hit.

I could dress that up, but I won’t; your time is valuable, so let’s get moving…

Sober Roads, Take Me Home

Some of you have been following my public posts on this.

I’ve been sharing openly about what it looks like to live sober since my first long-term journey in sobriety when I went from 7-7-2020 to 7-3-2024. I’m not going to rehash the whole thing here, but know that I’m still standing, still counting, and still choosing it every morning, with the new starting date of 1-1-2026.

(Yesterday I hit day 100)

That journey has become more of a centerpiece with my goal of writing a book to help others struggling with addiction, something I’ll share more about shortly.

31 Days to Masculinity Is Back, and It’s Mine

I originally published this book under a pen name; I’ve since corrected that mistake.

31 Days to Masculinity is now live on Amazon under my real name, where it belongs.

If you’re a man looking for a 31-day guide to help you stop drifting in life and start building, this program works. 31 DtM has helped thousands of men, and I let it fall to the side as I worked on other projects, but now it’s back, and I’m behind it fully, publicly, and with my name owning it.

To those who take it on, reach out with any questions.

»PAPERBACK EDITION«

»KINDLE EDITION«

The Landscaping Podcast Is Growing

What started as a conversation between me and Shay Brickhouse has turned into something I’m both proud of and impressed with.

The Landscaping Podcast keeps growing, keeps pulling in real conversations about the industry, entrepreneurship, and what it actually takes to run a business in the trades. If you’re in the green industry or just respect people who build things by hand, go check it out.

FOLLOW LANDSCAPING UNLIMITED ON IG

Z Photography Is Booming

This one is close to my heart.

Z Photography & Media has been growing, and I’ve been behind the lens on some projects that remind me why I picked up a camera in the first place. Follow along on IG or FB to see that side of the work.

Life in North Carolina

My daughter has taken up longboarding and is fully committed to it in the way only kids can be; fearless, fast, and no hesitation.

My son is doing well with baseball. He decided to leave his high school and take his life into his hands; that meant transitioning to a homeschool schedule, working two days a week at Landscaping Unlimited, and joining a homeschool athletic organization, which did not guarantee him a spot.

He got his shot, earned his spot, and has been having the time of his life on the diamond with his new teammates.

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My wife and I are continuing to grow together, live our lives in eastern NC, and figure out what the next chapter looks like.

Now, What’s to Come?

Starting this Monday, I’m doing something I’ve never done before.

I’m writing a book called Sober by Choice, and I’m publishing it here, one chapter a day, in real time.

1. These will be free to subscribers.

2. 31 consecutive days/chapters published.

3. I’ll have written the book to publish on Amazon by the end.

As I write it. Chapter by chapter, every weekday, delivered to your inbox.

This isn’t a teaser series or marketing; this is literally the whole book being given away, “live,” for anyone trying to get sober for a month or stay sober for another.

For the person who’s been thinking about dropping their vice, the ones who know they need a break, or those on day three and don’t know if they’ll make it to day ten…

I’m living this story;l I’m writing it from inside it, and I’m sharing it here because this is the most honest thing I can do with the platform I’ve built.

If you’re already subscribed, Monday TDDN is back in business.

Zac Small

PS: If you’re reading this and you’re not subscribed yet, now is the time. If you know someone who could use support, forward this to them. Share it with the person in your life who’s been fighting this battle quietly.

The door is open, just walk in and read.

This moment is the one where you realize you’ve been living on the edge of your own life; showing up, paying bills, doing the “responsible” things, all while losing the part of you that used to feel sharp, alive, and hungry for what life is serving.

To the husbands, fathers, and single men, you’re not broken for recognizing this loop you’re in, and you’re not weak for having strayed off the path you were on.

You’re just out of the arena, and getting back in doesn’t happen without some motivation and commitment to change, plus some guidance from a man who can help you get out of the hole you’re in and re-enter the arena to showcase your greatest version to everyone, yourself included…

“Are You Not Entertained?!?!”

You need awareness, a new standard, and daily execution toward the target; that’s why I’m running 31 Days to Masculinity, my program, which has been sponsored by the Fraternity of Excellence, a men’s community I am a part of, which stemmed from the third group challenge I ran in December of 2017.

This March, we are running the first group through the new book, published under my real name, not my pen name of “Hunter Drew,” and we’re going 31 Consecutive Days together, day by day, with men who are sick of starting over.

This isn’t a “read a book and journal your feelings” situation; it’s a reset built for real life; the challenges and self-awareness experienced in this are life-changing. If you’ve been a reader for any length of time, you know that I am not one to make unsubstantiated, shock-value claims, and I do not run salesy “buy all my shit” type ads or messages in my work.

I strive to be honest and transparent in all that I write, because I want people to see that this is true, and I am way cooler in person than online, when the inverse is often the case.

I say that to say this, I wrote this challenge, and it will change your life for the better forever if you follow it for 31 days…

JOIN THE FIRST "ZAC EDITION" 31 DTM

THE COST AND THE PRODUCT

ENTRY: $50

WHAT YOU GET:

• The digital advanced-reader edition of ‘31 Days to Masculinity’

• This digital copy holds the entire program, with rules, challenges, and explanations of why they matter, and how you can apply them to your life.

• An invitation to the private Slack channel where you will go through each day with other men doing the same. There is a set channel for each day, where you will log that day’s events. There will also be a channel for general discussions and questions, and a place where video chat links will be shared.

• I will run a “Welcome Aboard Zoom”, a weekly Zoom, and an “End of Program” Zoom. All are designed for you to see and hear from me, the program's creator, as well as from other men in the trenches who are going through this with you.

• 31 Straight days of me answering, motivating, and connecting with you and the group, all day, every day, for 31 days straight.

• Opportunities to discuss your issues, air out frustrations, and speak to men in a male-only environment.

• The opportunity to join 5,000+ alumni who’ve been through this program and changed their lives in the process.

PRIZE: For $50, you are getting 31 days of live engagement, a book/program, 5 video calls, connections that last a lifetime (if you open up), and the “reset” you’ve been looking for in life…

CLAIM YOUR SPOT HERE (YES, IT IS MEN ONLY)

This challenge is ridiculously underpriced, and yet I’m comfortable with it at this price point, as I know times are hard and many men who are looking for a reset are also looking to dial in their finances.

Add to that the difficulty of getting time to yourself, especially for my fellow family men, and it should be clear that I am trying to help my brothers out.

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When it works, and I know it will, these are the same men who will purchase the book once I release the “Zac Edition” on Amazon and leave reviews of their experience, and that will help with financial growth over the rest of the year, and bring it in front of men who will go through it alone, and change their lives in the process and continue the shift towards greter men in society which has been going on since 2017.

Why 31 DtM exists (and why it works)

Most men don’t fail because they don’t know what to do…

Men know what needs to be done; they fail because their lives lack a structure strong enough to hold them when they’re tired, busy, stressed, or discouraged.

That’s when the old patterns crawl back in, like seeking comfort, distractions, short-term dopamine, and excuses that sound logical.

You don’t need more information.

You need a system that forces you to build discipline the way you build strength; with Reps, Daily Challenge, and Intentional Discomfort.

This challenge is the system built with all of that in mind. I will tell you what you need to do each day, and I will ensure you are taking all the actions needed to enter “Day #32” with clear direction and clarity.

The history behind the book (the part most people don’t know)

I originally published 31 Days to Masculinity under a pen name: Hunter Drew

At the time of publication, I’d been writing and speaking online about relationships, health, and men’s issues for 6 years. It was a time when everything was “PC” and anyone speaking the truth was getting fired and their lives destroyed.

I wasn’t ready to attach my real name to a message I knew would offend everyone, and I had a Government job my family relied on. It was weakness and fear I masked with the labels of protection and intelligence.

Then, COVID hit, and when the world decided to run and hide, I decided it was time to drop the name and truly connect with people, as Zac.

I knew the moment it hit the world, some people would love it, and others would hate it, and I wasn’t interested in playing nice.

The book was written for men who were tired of drifting, the men who are functional on the outside but feel dull on the inside, the men who kept saying “I’ll get serious soon,” while the years kept moving.

It was built as a daily mission because that’s how real change happens, not with one big breakthrough, but with 31 straight days of proving to yourself that you do what you said you’d do.

The little things you’ll do in this challenge are the big things that will have you continuing to win, long after this month is completed.

Proof

This isn’t some new idea I’m testing on you…

31 Days to Masculinity has sold over 3,800 copies on Amazon.

I’ve also given away hundreds of copies during group campaigns, because my goal has never been to hoard the message; my goal has been to get it into the hands of men who will use it.

It spread because it’s simple, direct, and executable; one day, one standard, and one action…

Rinse, Wash, Repeat.

Why I’m republishing it under my own name

I decided a while ago that if I’m going to stand behind my words, I’m going to stand behind them with my name, so I’m republishing 31 Days to Masculinity under Zac Small.

I didn’t just “re-release” the same book; I’ve rewritten it as I have come a long way as a writer. If you ever need to see if you’ve grown as an artist, go back and look at your earlier works; you’d be shocked at what you once thought was good.

I’ve created a tighter delivery, stronger pace, clearer explanations, and pushed for even more impact…

The same mission, we’re just riding in a better vessel.

This is the version I want men to run, because if you’re going to invest 31 days of your life into a reset, it should be built to hit harder and stick longer.

Why Group Challenges Amplify the Impact

31 DtM works as a standalone book, and most men can buy it off Amazon and open the cover, but few are going to follow through on their own.

Isolation is where standards die. As you get busy, you miss a day, you rationalize it, and suddenly you’re back to “I’ll start Monday,” and that’s not a flaw of your character; it’s the pattern of your life, currently...

A group challenge will break that pattern.

31 DtM, when done with others, gives you a room full of motivated men who want more, moving in the same direction, which does two powerful things:

1. It normalizes discipline; you stop feeling as though you’re the only one fighting, and when you see others doing the same, you get the thought, “If they can do it, I can do it.”

2. It removes the “quiet quitting.” You won’t be able to just disappear when the momentum is shared with others; you get that sense of camaraderie, where “no man is left behind.”

This is why challenges work when they’re run the right way; the structure is simple, the expectations are clear, and the cost of disappearing is higher than the cost of doing the work. For possibly the first time in your life, you’re going to feel what brotherhood is all about.

JOIN THE GROUP STARTING MARCH 4th, 2026

What you’ll do inside the challenge

For 31 straight days, we run the mission together in a Slack group, where all of us will engage with messages and videos posted there.

Each day you’ll have:

• The day’s focus from the book

• A practical action to execute that day

• A place to check in (so you stop living in your head)

• A group that keeps you honest when your motivation fades

This is designed for the man who’s done negotiating with his own weakness.

Who this is for

This is for the man who keeps trying to “get it together” but never builds enough momentum to stay there. The man who has people depending on him and is tired of giving them the exhausted, distracted version of himself…

It’s also for the man who never felt like he had a “Rite of Passage” to manhood. How do you know you’re a man or “the man” when you never had a crucible to go through? Or maybe you didn’t have a father figure to show you what a man looks and acts like, so you never cultivated that part of your identity.

This challenge fills that void.

If you’re ready to rebuild discipline, confidence, and direction while being willing to show up daily, this is for you.

What changes after 31 days (if you actually do it)

You won’t just “feel better,” you’ll have proof.

1. Proof that you can keep a promise to yourself.

2. Proof that your life doesn’t have to be driven by mood.

3. Proof that discipline isn’t something you either “have” or “don’t have,” it’s something you build.

You’ll walk out with:

• A stronger baseline of self-respect

• A repeatable system you can run again

• More clarity, less mental noise

• Momentum that doesn’t collapse when life gets hard

• A standard you can enforce without needing hype

That’s the arena; it’s not a feeling, it’s a way of operating.

Join the Men of March 2026 31 DtM Challenge

If your gut is telling you to do this, stop debating it.

The men who change aren’t the men who think the longest; they’re the men who decide and then follow through on their commitment.

»JOIN HERE«

Once you’re in, follow the instructions received and be ready to start Day 1 with the group.

If deep in your soul, you know you’re not living as the best version of yourself, this is your invitation back into the arena.

31 days. Real change. It begins on March 4th.

- Zac Small

PS: If you’re looking for the maximum approach to this campaign, you can lock me in to be your accountability partner for the entire 31 days of the program.

It’s $500 and includes a private 10-min call before you begin the program, daily text messages throughout the campaign, and a 10-min call after 31 days.

If you’re interested in adding this on, hit the button below, and we’ll get it scheduled.

The raised voice, the threat, the corner, the humiliation of pulling down your pants so your bare ass could be beaten...

Then there was the hand that “had to do it,” because they loved you, and were doing it for your own good...

A lot of what we call discipline is, in reality, control, and control works the same way fear does: it makes the behavior stop in front of you.

Corporal Punishment does not raise a child who can govern themselves when you’re not in the room. More often, it builds a child who gets better at hiding their failings out of fear of pain.

This topic makes people furious because spanking isn’t just a method for many parents; it’s an identity.

It’s tied to “I turned out fine,” “kids need consequences,” “they have to learn respect,” and “the world is harsh.” I agree with one point: kids absolutely need standards and consequences, but pain from a parent and humiliation aren’t the right way to teach those lessons...

They’re shortcuts creating weak foundations.

The real question isn’t “does corporal punishment work?”

The real question is: What does corporal punishment produce?

Because yes, corporal punishment can produce obedience; so can yelling, threats, intimidation, and shame.

But obedience isn’t the goal.

If your goal is a quiet child, punishment will get you there. If your goal is to raise a fully-functional, emotionally developed, confident adult, then corporal punishment is a risky tool to use, as it is not harmless.

Even when you swear you’re doing it “calmly,” punishment teaches the same underlying lesson:

Power decides what’s true; big people are allowed to hurt small people; behave when someone stronger is watching; and feelings are a problem that should not be voiced...

That’s not discipline, that’s programming.

If you want a child who is functional and free, they need three skills that punishment doesn’t reliably teach...

1. They need to be able to feel emotions without becoming overwhelmed or consumed by them. This means they have to process what’s going on and be heard, not told how they should feel or behave in a moment.

2. They need the ability to repair damage when they mess up. If they’re corrected before they can self-correct, they’ll never develop the muscle to come back from a mistake.

3. The ability to tell the truth even when it costs them. When children admit to a mistake, it should not be met with violence, anger, and shame... It should be met with understanding and education.

Before anyone says, “So, your children do not suffer any consequences?”

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Let’s kill that retarded bullshit right now.

There’s a difference between absent parenting and peaceful parenting.

Absent parents offer no structure.

Peaceful parents take the hardest (yet most honest and efficient) path, building a structure within the child’s world.

Peaceful parenting isn’t soft; it’s strong leadership from parents who don’t need to use fear or the threat of pain to get their children to operate within the home’s framework...

Peaceful parenting is about leadership, and leadership is about inspiring your people so they want to do what you hoped they would do.

If you’re reading this and nodding along, understand that you can’t fix your whole household in one day, but you can reset your trajectory immediately by choosing to stop using force and fear...

What is your default threat when you’re overwhelmed?

• Yelling?

• Is it spanking?

• Taking everything away?

• Shaming them into compliance?

Recognize that humans under stress revert to what they learned.

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You say you want to “instill discipline,“ so does that mean getting immediate compliance from your child or long-term character development?

If you choose a character, your methods have to match the mission.

That means replacing punishment with consequences that teach rather than those that humiliate.

Consequences should educate, not degrade.

Start using three questions that build internal control before you lecture or explode.

1. Ask what happened.

2. Ask what they were feeling right before it happened.

3. Ask what they’ll do next time instead.

That’s how you raise kids who can think while emotional, not kids who shut down until they blow up later or learn to lie so they don’t get hurt.

If you think that there needs to be “payment” for mistakes, then make repair the currency of your home.

When your kid messes up, the goal isn’t suffering; it’s repair.

Repair teaches something punishment never can, “I can be accountable without being worthless.”

That single lesson prevents an insane amount of future dysfunction, and it’s how you raise kids who don’t crumble under guilt and don’t live addicted to rebellion.

You show them your features and flaws, allow them to share their own, and show they everyone makes mistakes, but those who repair the mistake, be it breaking a thing, disrespecting someone, or damaging a relationship, you can overcome it by owning it.

Choices come with consequences, and kids need to know that they will make mistakes. Instead of turning against themselves, they can have their backs, pick themselves up, and work on repairing the damage and learning from the event.

A lot of us were punished, and some of us did “turn out fine” (after therapy, overcoming addiction, handling anger issues, going through depression, etc.) But fine is a low bar, and life is too short to give years away suffering from preventable childhood trauma.

Fine isn’t regulated, fine doesn’t mean secure, and fine isn’t honest under pressure...

Fine is often just functional enough to survive.

“I’m fine“ - People who are 100% not fine...

If you want your kids to be functional and free, you don’t raise them through fear and force; you raise them through standards, structure, repair, connection, and leadership.

If punishment is the main tool in your house, your child isn’t learning discipline; they’re learning how to avoid you, and one day, sooner than you think, you won’t be able to control them anymore.

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Build with them now, not for your convenience, but for their future.

If you were raised with spanking and you say shit like, “I turned out fine,” did the spanking and yelling make you free, or did it make you compliant?

-Zac Small

Landscaping Unlimited’s Olympic ad, which I created/recorded/edited aired during WITN’s Olympic coverage, and most people are going to treat that sentence like it’s a cool flex (Which it is), but it’s also more than marketing…

People will say, “Nice,” or “Big time,” with maybe some, “Congratulations...” and then they’ll scroll.

But if you know what it takes to bring a company out of the way it has always done things, to start doing them differently, and if you know what it takes to earn trust in a small town, like keeping promises when the weather turns, and showing up when you’re tired, then you know this wasn’t just “an ad” by Landscaping Unlimited; It was a statement to who we are, and a testament to what we stand for.

The Commercial Is Part of a Bigger Mission

Small businesses in small towns don’t make major changes often; that’s the beauty and allure of getting away from the city, time slows down, and there’s little change.

Small businesses in small towns don’t often drop Olympic coverage either.

Landscaping Unlimited, with Shay Brickhouse at the helm, has done both.…

That isn’t something that happened because he got lucky; it happened because somebody made a decision, and that was the decision to not hide anymore.

When Shay brought me back into the company, it was with a specific vision, “Zac, I want you to do what you do, within Landscaping Unlimited” and that guidance is what I have followed since, and it has led to an overhauled website, the creation of a Podcast, TikTok, IG, & YouTube channel; a revamped Facebook page, and an explosion within the newly created “Digital Division” of the company, which now has an Olympic Ad in the mix, and today we will add “Super Bowl Commercial” to the list of achievements…

We’re not playing small, we’re not whispering about what we are doing, and we’re not waiting for anyone's permission to try new things.

Shay has planted a flag where everybody can see it, and he is letting our work back it up, and our conversations bring others into the discussion around the Green Industry.

@landscapingunlimitedToday we unveiled our first project using the @DJI Osmo The fact that this device could follow the tractor, receive audio from the mic (@DJI Official Mic 3) from inside the cabin of the tractor, and keep the video crisp in the freezing conditions is just impressive. Stay tuned for more DJI + Landscape/Hardscape/Equipment work. #snow #plow #fyp #viral #follow

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Shay’s vision is greater than making some sales off the ads run; his goal is great, and that is to bring the Green Industry, consisting of Landscape, Hardscape, Pesticides, Heavy Equipment, Lawn Care, Snow Care, Plants, etc. from being viewed as some sort of “fall back plan”, to the mainstream where it is viewed as a profession, receiving the same respect and allure as all of the other trades out there like electricians, plumbers, mechanics, welders, etc.

And the reason I’m writing all of this is to tell you what I’ve seen from the inside, because what happened here is bigger than Landscaping Unlimited.

It’s about what happens when you stop trying to be “Reasonable” and “Logical” with your vision, and instead, start getting real about it.

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The part nobody understands about “the commercial”

Most commercials are loud, polished, and forgettable.

They’re designed to capture your attention for 30 seconds (6 if it’s the Super Bowl) and hope you remember a phone number long enough to act on it.

That’s not what a brand needs anymore.

• A brand needs to be felt.

• A brand needs to have a spine.

• A brand needs to show authentic identity, and not a polished perception.

People don’t buy the best product anymore; they buy the product they trust, and they buy it from the company that feels like they’re relatable and honest. They buy from the team that they believe will still be there next season.

Trust doesn’t come from perfect lighting; it comes from knowing and seeing the “real people”, hearing their story, seeing consistency in their behavior, and witnessing their public commitment to a mission.

That’s why the real win here isn’t “we got on TV”

The win is that Landscaping Unlimited is building a footprint that reaches beyond a job site. We’re building something (publicly) that has enough identity to hold attention during the Olympics, and doing something most local companies never even attempt.

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Shay isn’t after “likes” and “influencer status”; he is after that feeling you get only when you know you have given everything you’ve got to a cause. Bringing me in to create a “digital division” to an already established landscaping company was uncomfortable, came without directions (I still don’t have a job title), and had plenty of hiccups along the way…

Still, his focus was to bring the story of our area (ENC) and our profession + team members from the hidden corners of Washington/Bath, NC to everyone’s screens and through their speakers, so what is actually going on in the Green Industry, and who we are as a company could be seen and heard.

If you want to understand the deeper intention behind that move, why the Olympics and Super Bowl were done, what it’s meant to represent, and where this company is going, you’ll hear it straight from us on the podcast landing page here:

THE LANDSCAPING PODCAST, POWERED BY LANDSCAPING UNLIMITED

Because if you only see “commercial,” you’re missing the entire point.

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What this moment taught me (and why I’m writing it in The Daily Draft)

I’ve been a photographer long enough to know that the difference between a “nice photo” and a photo that stops someone cold is never the image itself; it’s the story the image tells, without ever including a written word.

I’ve filmed enough video to know the difference between content and communication, and I’ve written enough articles to understand that most businesses are not failing because they’re bad at what they do…

They’re failing because nobody knows who they are, nobody feels their story, so nobody can tell them apart from the next company down the road.

They blend in, play it safe, and market like everybody else.

They tell the world they’re “high quality,” or “locally owned,” and “customer-focused,” and then they wonder why nothing changes…

The market is numb to generic language.

The only thing that cuts through numbness is the truth that’s been sharpened into a story, and that’s what I’m obsessed with. It’s that wiring of my brain that Shay wanted brought to Landscaping Unlimited.

1. The story that makes people remember.

2. The story that makes people feel something.

3. The story turns a local name into something that carries weight.

That’s what I do, whether it’s behind a camera, behind a microphone, or on the page.

If you want to see the kind of work and storytelling I’m building across photography and video, especially the style that’s meant to stop people on social media, you’ll find it here: @Z Photography and Media

Not because I’m trying to sell you anything in this article, that link goes to my IG, it’s free. I’m sharing it because if you’re a business owner reading this, you already know the truth: You can be the best in town and still be invisible.

And if you don’t learn how to tell your story, somebody else, who’s likely less skilled than you, will become the name everybody remembers.

What happens next

Landscaping Unlimited has been building something that’s easy to underestimate if you only look at landscaping as “landscaping.”

Because we aren’t just a landscaping company; we’re a company speaking about standards, maintaining a reputation 30+ years in the making as someone you can trust, and a group of men with the willingness to do the hard work in public.

We’re building a company that can carry a bigger mission without collapsing under it, and the Olympics ad and today’s Super Bowl ad are markers on that road.

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If you want the behind-the-scenes thinking on why the podcast exists, what we’re building, and how this moment fits into the bigger picture, start here.

And if you want to see what “story-first” content actually looks like when it’s done with real grit, and not fluff and hollowwords, head to Z Photography and Media.

That’s it; no pitch, and no pressure; just a reminder that Eastern North Carolina isn’t short on talent, it’s short on people willing to plant a flag and tell the truth about what they’re building.

And now, one local company just did it in the middle of the Olympics, and will do it again, during the Super Bowl, one of the most-viewed sporting events in the world.

- Zachary Small

They may see the before-and-after photo, the shine, the curl, and the color that somehow looks both natural and impossible.

They see the client smiling, with the caption “Obsessed 😍”.

What they don’t see is the grind behind it, how much learning, investing, problem-solving, and emotional labor are found underneath “looking good.”

I've heard about it, and I know from others who have spoken about their work in the industry, so I decided to sit down with my wife, Jackie, for a real conversation about cosmetology…

Why she chose it, what surprised her, what was hardest, what she loves most, what people get wrong, and what technology is doing to the beauty industry.

This is her story, in her own words…

Interview: Jackie on Cosmetology, Confidence, and the Future of Beauty

1) What made you choose cosmetology school, and what was going on in your life when you finally decided to go?

Jackie: Cosmetology has always been a passion, something I’ve been naturally drawn to. The timing just never felt right before, but once we moved to North Carolina, I was able to attend school during hours that worked for our family.

The school was close and one of the best around, so I decided to jump in headfirst and finally go for it.

2) What surprised you most in school? What did you think cosmetology would be? And what did you learn it actually was?

Jackie: I was surprised by how many different types of people were there, and how many different reasons they had for getting into cosmetology. It wasn’t just people who wanted to color or cut hair; there were people of all ages, work experiences, and walks of life.

It turned into an unexpected networking experience where I learned a lot from others, not just the people teaching the class.

I also thought I’d leave school knowing exactly what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. But once you get into the real world, you learn even more, especially so from seasoned stylists.

School gave me a foundation, but I’ve learned so much since graduating.

»CLICK HERE«

TO FOLLOW JACKIE ON INSTAGRAM

3) What was the hardest part of becoming legit, and what came closest to breaking you/making you quit?

Jackie: Building a clientele is the hardest part for most new stylists.

Your clients are your income, so if you don’t have clients, you don’t make money, and that pressure is always in the background.

That was my biggest fear: Would I actually build a clientele strong enough to make this a true career?

The answer was yes, and now I’m in a comfortable position. My repeat clients always build my confidence, and that leads to word-of-mouth referrals, which drive even more growth.

It becomes a full-circle process: doing great work with my clients leads to more clients appreciating that work.

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4) Do you remember your first “I can actually do this” moment?

Jackie: I don’t remember a specific person, but a few months into working at my first salon, I started having moments when I felt comfortable with my own style.

I stopped trying to do what everyone else was doing and started breaking away from the black-and-white way school taught me.

That’s when I felt my confidence increase, and that is when I really began to bloom as a cosmetologist and stylist.

5) How has working in the beauty industry changed you, your confidence, your identity, and/or how you see people?

Jackie: Working in the Beauty Industry has changed me mentally in a big way because I didn’t realize how much hard work it takes to be a hairstylist.

It’s hard on your body, but also hard on your mind; you’re constantly problem-solving and working with different personalities and schedules, and it’s been an eye-opening experience, which I’ve enjoyed.

It’s also taught me compassion…

People get sick, things come up, and appointments need to be moved; when clients sit in your chair for two to four hours, you truly get to know them and what they are going through in life.

Over time, you end up seeing them more than some friends or family, so it’s made me more understanding, more engaged, and more connected to other people’s stories.

6) What do you love most now, and what’s your favorite part of the industry?

Jackie: My favorite thing is vivid color.

I love the bright pinks, purples, reds, and blues; it’s fun, creative, and it feels like turning hair into an actual art canvas.

I don’t get to do it as often as natural colors, so when I get someone who wants vivid color, even if it’s just once a month, it gives me that creative freedom I love.

7) What do most people misunderstand about cosmetologists?

Jackie: People don’t realize how much work and time/money investment it takes to be a professional.

They compare it to box dye pricing, but it’s not the same; there’s licensing, continuing education, time, skill, placement, formulation, and a lot of overhead from tools, supplies, product, and salon costs…

Costs have increased everywhere, but for some reason, people resist seeing price increases in hair the same way they accept increases in groceries or rent.

The truth is, professional hair services require real expertise and real investment to deliver high-quality results safely, and that experience and expertise comes with a cost.

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8) What does being a licensed cosmetologist cover in North Carolina?

Jackie: In North Carolina, cosmetology covers hair, skin, and nails.

The cosmetology program requires more hours because it includes training in all three areas. So, if I wanted to specialize in nails, I could, and if I wanted to practice skincare like an esthetician, I could.

The limit is anything medical, like injections (Botox) or services that go beyond what’s legally allowed, which is the first layer of the epidermis. But within the scope of cosmetology, I can absolutely focus on skincare if I want to, and I’m interested in that area as well.

Nails just aren’t my personal preference, but the license allows it.

9) What parts of the beauty industry do you think will evolve most with AI and new technology?

Jackie: AI is already impacting things, especially with photos clients bring in from Pinterest or Instagram.

Sometimes the photo is heavily edited or 100% AI-generated, which can create unrealistic expectations. We (Cosmetologists) now need to address those conversations immediately during consultations, as the expectations may not be realistic when the example provided is not real.

I also think AI will help in big ways, such as color analysis, better formulation, tone matching, and maybe even facial scanning, along with more advanced guidance tools.

I expect it’ll also improve, if it isn’t already, everyone’s booking systems and client management.

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10) What’s your “why” right now, and how do you want to be remembered?

Jackie: My why is simple, I genuinely enjoy it.

I don’t dread going to work, I love my clients (especially the ones who’ve been with me since the beginning), and I’ve built relationships that feel like real friendships.

It also works with our family schedule, which matters a lot; I get to do what I love in a way that fits our life.

How do I want to be remembered?

I want to be remembered as someone who listened, who didn’t judge, and who made people feel welcome. I want every person in my chair to feel safe and respected, and to leave feeling like their best self.

BONUS MESSAGE:

Jackie: If someone wants to get into the industry, they should research what it really takes, like the hours, the mental and physical work, and the hustle behind building a steady clientele.

If you’re ready for that challenge, it’s worth it.

There are ways to “dip your toes in” first to see if you like it, such as working at Ulta or a beauty counter to see if the industry feels right before committing to school.

People sometimes treat it like a “fallback career”, but for me, it was the one I kept falling back to because it’s what I truly wanted.

I tried other paths in life as a professional working adult, and I’m glad I chose this. If you feel called to it, go for it. If you have any questions, reach out, I’m happy to talk about it and share what I’ve experienced.

I hope you enjoyed the interview.

If you have any questions or want me to relay anything to my lady, drop your comments below.

- Zachary Small

But overall, the lights are on, people are working, restaurants are open, kids are still playing sports, the Turnage still has shows, and the skate park is being used…

On the surface, it looks like a normal small city doing normal small city things and that’s why this article and the information within matters

(Thank you, Joe Davis, for bringing awareness to this issue and for providing all of the graphics below.)

Towns don’t usually collapse with explosions and sirens; they drift and swell in the wrong places. They get expensive in ways you don’t notice until you’re the one paying for it, and by the time you feel it, the decisions have already been made.

If you look at the numbers being circulated right now, a pattern becomes clear quickly.

City debt has more than quadrupled since 2019, rising from roughly $5.4 million to over $24 million.

That’s not “a few projects;” that’s a structural shift, and a city borrowing future years to fund the present ambitions, and betting that tomorrow will be richer, bigger, and more stable than today.

But here’s the problem.

The community isn’t growing with it, so what if that doesn’t happen..?

Show Me The Money!!!

City payroll expenses have increased by more than 70%, climbing from about $9.8 million to nearly $17 million. During that same period, the city’s population declined and average resident income fell.

So what does that mean in plain English?

It means that fewer people earning less money are now supporting a larger, more expensive city operation.

That isn’t politics; that’s arithmetic, and I’m not even a math guy.

It gets even more uncomfortable when you zoom in on the gap between the people being governed and the people governing.

According to the numbers shown, the average payroll expense per city employee now exceeds the average Washington resident’s annual income by more than 55%. Think about what that creates psychologically, not just financially.

When the average city employee earns more than the average citizen, and those earning less are expected to happily fund those earning more, the government stops feeling like “public service” and starts feeling like an entirely separate social class.

I’m not saying city employees are bad people, but the system becomes insulated from the reality outside its doors, so the optics become, “Why should I care about you?” and when citizens start to turn on their fellow citizens, and governing positions, a mass exodus occurs, or trenches get dug in and nobody is willing to budge, leaving the city to fall to pieces in the stalement.

That’s where resentment comes from.

This issue here does not stem from personal hate, racism, or alignment with a specific political party vs the other (Dem vs GOP); the resentment that is going to arise will stem from a simple and very primal human feeling:

“I’m working harder, earning less, and somehow the system above me keeps getting bigger, and asking me to do more...”

Now, I’m not the expert here, let’s get that clear; I’m a man who works in Washington, NC, asking questions based on the information I came across on Facebook.

I’m not going to sit here and say there aren’t valid reasons for the staffing increases or that certain salaries aren’t deserved. I do believe the government is evil, but not necessarily all of its people.

Here is what I want you to understand, if nothing else, after reading this article: When government grows faster than its people, someone eventually pays.

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And let’s be honest, it’s rarely the people in the offices and the meetings who pay first.

• It’s the homeowner who gets squeezed by rising taxes.

• It’s the small business owner who can’t absorb higher fees.

• It’s the young family that looks at the cost of living and decides to move.

• It’s the working man who watches infrastructure decay while payroll grows and wonders why everything feels harder than it used to.

Debt makes this worse because debt is a promise.

Borrowing money isn’t free.

It’s a decision that hands the next generation a bill and says, “Figure it out.” And in a city where population is shrinking and incomes are declining, debt becomes less like “investment” and more like a weight that the community drags behind it.

The other red flag in all of this is leadership cost expansion.

The City Manager’s office reportedly jumped from around $349,575 in the 2019 budget cycle to $637,835 by 2025, an 82% increase. Add in a $140,000 severance package, and you start to see what frustrates people.

People aren’t just jealous of the salaries, the government is too “behind-closed-doors” and citizens don’t feel like they are being invited into the explanation of where their money is going, or why.

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The same report suggests the office is now on track to save around $380,000 under the current structure, which is good, but it also proves the obvious point:

The system can correct itself, but only after money is already gone.

So what’s the takeaway?

1. Screaming “corruption!” won’t fix anything.

2. Wanting to “burn it all down” is closer to the right answer, but it won't work until there is a mass collective agreement.

3. The “I’ll vote my guy in to fix it” is a ridiculous proposition, as everyone in government is the issue, not the solution.

The takeaway is both simple and more difficult:

Washington is drifting out of alignment with the people who fund it.

The numbers will continue to pull the city in the same direction until citizens push back with questions, clarity, and pressure.

If you live here, you don’t need to become an accountant overnight; you just need to stop letting technical language hypnotize you.

Ask basic questions:

1. What is the plan to reverse the drift?

2. Why is debt growing while incomes decline?

3. Why is payroll rising faster than the city’s population?

4. What outcomes are residents getting in exchange for this expansion?

Because if the answers aren’t clear, the future is.

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Higher taxes, lower trust, fewer young families, a smaller middle class, and a city government that grows more expensive while the community grows more exhausted.

Nobody wants that.

But it’s exactly what happens when growth is occurring in the system while contraction is occurring in people, and sooner or later, someone pays.

If something isn’t done, who do you think will be left to foot that bill?

- Zachary Small

I’m not depressed, and I’m not writing this because I’m trying to be edgy or “doomsdaying” for attention. I hate these three things because they’re true, and they don’t negotiate. They don’t care how disciplined you are, how faithful you are, how much money you make, how “good” of a human you choose to be, how clean you live, or how hard you try to “stay present.”

These things are coming for you either way, and I hate that…

1. Love No More…

The first one is the one that makes my chest tighten if I sit with it for more than a few seconds, and it’s the fact that one day, either my wife or I will lose the other forever.

Jackie has been my girl since sixteen, and there is no love I’ve ever known that touches what I have for her.

Nothing has come close, nothing ever will.

The brutal part isn’t just the thought of death, it’s the thought of separation.

One day she’ll be gone from my life, or I’ll be gone from hers, and regardless of who goes first, the outcome is the same, the two of us are no more.

The world keeps moving, but the normal life we built, our jokes, our routines, our daily “babe, look at this,” our quiet comfort, everything gets ripped in half.

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I’d like to think we find each other again somewhere on the other side of this life, and maybe we do; I hope we do…

But even then, it won’t be this.

It won’t be her in the room right now, it won’t be today, it won’t be the normal moments that feel so ordinary you don’t realize they’re sacred until you’ve lost the ability to live inside them another night.

2. Now They’re Separated

The second one is quieter, but it hits a tender part of my soul all the same, and that’s the awareness that my children will grow up, and they won’t live in the same home.

I’ve shared before how impressed Jackie and I are with the relationship our son and daughter have. They’re a solid duo, and they don’t just love each other because they’re supposed to; they actually rock with each other.

Our son talks to our daughter, our daughter talks to our son, and they game-plan their lives together.

They move through life like teammates, going out of their way to be there for one another, even when it costs them something.

Watching that bond form has been one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever witnessed as a father, and still, I know what’s coming.

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One day, they won’t be in the next room.

One day, too soon, the house won’t have both of their voices bouncing off the walls, then it won’t have either of their voices...

One day, there won’t be the same dinner table, the same routines, the same “where are they? They’re with each other.” Even if they keep that bond as adults, and I pray that they do, there’s still going to be a day when they go to separate homes, separate lives, separate responsibilities, forever…

I’m not interested in convincing myself I’m cool with it just because it’s “how life goes.” I know it’s inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t suck just because it’s a healthy development and stage of life.

3. Another Amazing Moment Gone Forever

The third one sneaks up on you while you’re not paying attention, except that I’m hyper-aware of time and always paying attention to its passage, so I am well aware that all the good times come to an end.

I don’t mean just the big milestones, I mean the regular stuff…

The moments that feel like nothing while they’re happening, but become everything when you look back.

I’ve had this habit/ability for as long as I can remember. I attribute it to my mother’s suicide when I was six. It’s where I can separate myself from a moment while I’m still in it; not in a “disassociation” way, but rather in a “I can see what is going on above myself, as I am still present and in the moment.

I’ll be sitting there with my wife, laughing with my kids, or having a night with friends that feels alive, and a voice in the back of my mind will look over it all and whisper, "Enjoy this, because it won’t last."

I distinctly remember times when I’ve thought, “I wish this moment would never end, but I know it will.”

It’s happened in the military, at church, at parties, during random afternoons that weren’t supposed to be memorable, but somehow were. And every time I notice it, it feels like life is reminding me of the same brutal truth:

It doesn’t matter how perfect the footprints are; the waves of time come in anyway, and after enough time passes, you can’t see them anymore.

All that’s left is whatever you managed to carry inside you, and whatever you were wise enough to appreciate while it was happening.

These Are Not Three Fears, They’re Three Aspects of Being Alive I Hate

They’re guarantees, they’re unavoidable, and you can do everything right and still be no different from anyone else. The quality of your time may be greater, but the experiences of losing your love, separating from your kids, and watching time pass will happen nonetheless.

You can be healthy, wealthy, intentional, disciplined, and deeply in love; still, reality will take its cut.

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To be clear, I’m not writing this as an expert, and I’m not offering any solutions…

I’m not even trying to pretend I can tie this up with a neat little call to action and say these experiences are about “growth.” I’m writing it as a man admitting something; I hate that these things are true, and I hate how fast they become real.

1. Because one day you’ll kiss your wife and you won’t know it’s the last kiss.

2. One day, you’ll pick up your kids to carry them to bed, and you won’t realize it’s the last time you’ll have that quiet little moment.

3. One day, your son and daughter will be living somewhere else, and your home will feel bigger and quieter in a way you never asked for.

4. One day, you’ll look back on “the good times” and realize you knew you were in them, and there was nothing you could do to stop their passing…

My only recommendation (if you can even call it that) is, don’t overlook how quick the inevitable becomes reality.

Don’t wait until life rips something out of your hands before you start holding it as tenderly as you should. This is your warning, and it’s mine too; pay attention…

- Zachary Small

That isn’t an edgy line for a wallpaper or a gym hoodie; it’s a warning label for modern life because right now, in our “age of tech,” it’s easier than ever to “gaze into the abyss.”

You don’t have to walk through a war zone or interview a criminal to see evil; you can find it on your phone in five seconds. You can consume unfathomable atrocities while you’re eating breakfast, and when you do that long enough, your mind becomes both desensitized and hyper-aware of the darkness that exists within our reality.

This is why most people end up tense, exhausted, sleep-deprived, and emotionally flat as they age, without recognizing why that deterioration from the inside out is happening to them.

The problem is that people confuse exposure with wisdom.

I’ve found that people think being aware of evil automatically makes them wise, strong, or “prepared,” and it doesn’t.

Awareness is just information acknowledgement.

Wisdom is how you integrate that information into your behaviors and routines; ultimately, it’s what kind of person you become while carrying it.

You’re not weak for being affected by what you see. If you’re human, certain things are supposed to disturb you:

Kids being harmed, innocent people crushed by systems, the rape of men and women, violence packaged as entertainment, exploitation framed as acceptable behavior, the desecration of religious symbols, and unfair brutality released upon innocent souls…

If that doesn’t register emotionally, you’re either unusually stoic in your acceptance of the way the world is, or, as has become the case in a majority of folks, you’ve gone numb, and numbness isn’t strength.

In fact, tuning out from it all, or just turning off your feelings, is often the first symptom of a slow spiritual and psychological infection.

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This is where the abyss becomes dangerous.

The negativity and “abyss” don’t just want your attention; they want your identity.

It wants you to start speaking in absolutes and saying things like people are trash, everything is rigged, nothing matters, hope is naive, and trying is pointless.

That mindset doesn’t make you informed; it makes you powerless, turning you into a spectator who believes the only rational posture is cynicism and retreat.

Nietzsche wasn’t saying “don’t look into the abyss”; he was saying “Don’t move into it.”

There’s a difference between studying darkness and building a home inside it.

Some people learn about evil and come back sharper, cleaner, and more disciplined.

These are the people who saw the monsters in the abyss and tightened their personal boundaries, protected their families, and then developed their discernment to better see who they allowed into their lives.

Other people treat darkness as normal entertainment and content that belongs on their “For You Page”; they doomscroll, binge on outrage, and call it “being informed,” while their minds quietly become permanent war rooms.

I know men who could tell you everything about everything when it comes to underground cells, domestic terrorists, anti-2A laws, and all of the corruption that is occurring in their state…

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I hadn't commented before because I don’t know these men personally, I don’t know the behind-the-scenes, I don’t know their positions on topics, and with all that, I’ve learned not to speak about matters I’m not educated on…

I’ve been cordial with both candidates; I know of them, and in passing, we will offer friendly hellos, normal community interactions, but nothing deeper than that, until today. I’m not going to pretend something this ugly (you’ll see what I’m talking about shortly, and most likely agree with me) is “just politics” and keep my mouth shut.

If you’re running for sheriff, the top law enforcement position in the county, and you decide your best move is to push an AI-generated piece instead of real evidence, you’ve disqualified yourself in my eyes.

This is not because I’m sensitive, but because I’m paying attention.

QUICK BACKGROUND

The Republican primary for sheriff is on March 3, 2026.

Kelly Cox is a former Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office lieutenant who currently works in Craven County and filed to run against Hammonds.

That part is public, verified, and normal.

What isn’t normal is what happened next.

According to Cox’s statement, an AI video was circulated that depicts him recklessly speeding in a patrol car, paired with “half-truths and personal attacks.” He says the video was pushed by the current sheriff and that a campaign content creator threatened to release more AI videos.

People can smell desperation.

If you have real dirt on your opponent, you don’t need AI-generated footage or to spin a “negative narrative.”

You bring receipts, like real video clips, you cite real reports or quotes from real interviews, and you let truth do what truth always does, land heavy on the readers/viewers so they can understand why you feel your opponent is not fit to lead...

AI is what you reach for when you want the emotional impact of evidence without actually having evidence.

The AI video that was circulated, depicting Kelly Cox speeding recklessly in a patrol car, hit different because if you’re willing to manufacture an “image” of your opponent, especially in a law enforcement race, what does that signal to your voters?

You’re telling them you’re comfortable blurring the line between truth and persuasion as long as it benefits you; that is not “campaign strategy,” that is a character reveal.

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Here’s why this hits harder than a typical political smear: Sheriffs aren’t running to become influencers.

They’re running to lead an office where truth matters in courtrooms, affidavits, investigations, and public trust. The job is supposed to operate on facts, not vibes, and even local coverage of this race has emphasized that voters should judge candidates on what they’ve done and what they stand for.

Now zoom out, this isn’t just about one video.

This is the disease spreading through American politics, The “Win at all costs, truth be damned” messaging is built on distortion, gossip, and manufactured perception.

We’ve watched it rot national politics for years, and the insult is seeing Washington, DC, get brought to Washington, NC, and the communities around it.

The part that should terrify everybody: AI makes lying cheap.

AI’s “Proof” can be provided without the need for witnesses or evidence; you need a narrative that feels true long enough to stain someone’s name. That’s not campaigning, that’s social sabotage, and once that becomes acceptable, every decent candidate, left, right, or independent, gets punished for not playing dirty.

Fortunately, there’s often a trail one can follow if they’re willing to take a few steps to see how that ad ended up in front of them in the first place…

This part should make everyone’s ears perk up

Tony Krantz uncovered the ad-disclaimer trail and brought it to the public's attention. His point was simple, people don’t realize how much you can learn by clicking the three dots on a political ad and checking who’s paying for it, and that’s what Hammonds is playing to with who he is targeting.

The screenshots he shared show a political ad from Freedom in NC running “fact check” style content targeting Cox, and the “paid for by” disclosure lists QuidAI.

The disclaimer information also lists an address in Edmond, Oklahoma, and names Nico Nathan as the point of contact.

I’m not telling you what to think about that, only that out-of-state money and out-of-state operators are pushing negative messaging in a local sheriff race, and that should set off alarms for anyone who cares about clean elections.

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Craven County Would Also Like a Word

Cox also raised a second point that matters; he says the AI content used by Hammonds depicted a patrol car from another county’s sheriff’s office (Craven County) without permission, and he claims the sitting Craven County Sheriff reached out to address the use of his vehicle and department name to Hammonds, and Hammonds refused to return calls about it.

Now, to be as transparent as I am saying these campaigns should be, I’m not in those rooms, and I’m not going to pretend I can verify every detail from my keyboard, but the allegation itself is serious, because public resources and public symbols are not props…

They represent taxpayers, deputies, and credibility.

Here’s what I do know, with 100% certainty: I don’t want leaders who need and are willing to use fake visuals to make their argument. I want leaders who can stand on real work in the real world and focus on the real issues citizens face.

There’s a difference between using AI to edit faster or clean up audio and using AI to create fake material about a real human being to influence voters.

The second one is poison.

I believe this video will cost Hammonds the election; it fired up Cox, fired up his supporters, moved undecided voters towards Cox, and angered some Hammond supporters...

I hope other elected leaders are paying attention

If Hammonds were to just come out and say, "Listen, AI is new, and we were trying to get creative with a new tool avialable and we made a mistake by going that far," I would be able to put it to bed, but he hasn't, and that is why I am now writing this piece…

The American people are done with the fake-news mudslinging; we want authentic people willing to lead with integrity and transparency.

Using AI to attack Cox was so off-putting to ordinary people who still believe public service should have standards that even those who don’t know what AI is or how to use it are upset that something fake was presented as truth.

The kind of people who don’t want “D.C. politics” infecting “N.C.’s Sheriff’s race” are the kind of people who want the sheriff to act like the sheriff before election day.

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I’ll close where I started: I don’t know either candidate personally; I’ve had cordial, positive interactions with both, and this AI video + the negative, fake messaging orbiting it sealed the deal for me.

When it comes time to vote, I’ll be voting for Kelly Cox.

- Zac Small

There was no celebration, applause, or performance for social media.

It was just me with a clear mind and cold hands, working before dawn to clear snow and ice so businesses in Greenville, North Carolina, could open their doors for people and keep things moving…

The first time I went sober (7-7-2020 to 7-3-2024), I made it a whole “thing,” with a group and constant posting on my timelines; I’m not doing that this time, in this version of my journey, without alcohol, sobriety is a lot more about me, not “we…”

It isn’t going to be a poetic collection of inspirational quotes and milestones shared for validation and/or to persuade others to join. I’ve realized that sobriety, when taken seriously, shows up more through service and acknowledgement than through showcasing discipline for recognition.

Of course I will still discuss it (I’m writing this article as we speak) but this piece isn’t for you to join me, or for me to grow a group of sober individuals; this is me sharing my life, and if you find value, great, but my service to society is going to be through the work I do, and showing up, time after time with a clear mind, and decision to speak against the manipulation and pain that is championed by the media and politics.

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You Can Do More (in life) with Less (alcohol)

The power sobriety provides shows up in uncomfortable conditions when quitting would be easier, and excuses would be socially acceptable.

A month ago, comfort was an option, escaping the noise was normal and familiar, and calling it “relaxation” sounded perfectly reasonable, as I had been achieving a ton in my life, across the board.

That path was well-worn and socially endorsed, but comfort never built anything worth keeping, and escape always comes with a bill due later.

Instead, I chose to be useful, and sobriety was an important part of improving my efficiency and capacity as a man.

The perfect example is that I spent the night of my one-month milestone clearing snow for the businesses we maintain in Greenville, NC. We left at 10 pm on Saturday and didn’t get home until 5 pm on Sunday.

I was not originally scheduled for this overnight response team. I volunteered for it at the last minute because something in my soul said I needed to go and be there with my guys, comfort be damned.

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If I’d been drinking, I’d not have been in a position to do any of that, and thus, I’d have been of less service to the company I serve and the community we serve.

I made a video for our Landscaping TikTok while clearing the snow

@landscapingunlimitedIf it’s outside, we can handle it. Rain, Shine, NC Summer Heat or as we have today, Snowmageddon Makes no difference, we got you covered. #snow #northcarolina #fyp #bluecollar #landscaping

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I chose clarity over avoidance.

I also chose to work my body rather than poison it, and contribute to my community instead of outsourcing responsibility to someone else.

Those choices don’t make me special; they make me accountable.

If you’re reading this and telling yourself you’ll start next week, or that you deserve a break before you’ve earned one, understand, noone is coming to rescue you.

Your intentions don’t carry weight, and your promises don’t change outcomes; only consistent, uncomfortable action will lead to the changes you desire.

ACTA, NON VERBA

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For me, it’s one month down.

If this message makes you uncomfortable, that’s a signal worth paying attention to; if it lights a fire, use it.

- Zachary Small

What I am seeing is that while everyone’s arguing about today’s mainstream talking point, the official records on Epstein have been released, and they show something we all should be taking to the streets and prepared to overthrow our government for…

But that won’t happen because everyone is playing “activist,” but nobody wants the smoke when it comes to hardcore action.

Understand this, it has now been 100% proven that when children were being exploited, the system didn’t just fail to act, it negotiated to allow the exploitation to continue, under agreed-upon terms...

This isn’t a “conspiracy post,” this is a receipt-based post, written after I spent some time scanning through the Epstein Files released on X.

Here’s what’s confirmed in government documents

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a memo describing what’s in the investigative holdings:

Images and videos of victims who are minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sexual abuse material and pornography.

It also states the review “confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.”

Let that sit in your chest for a second; over a thousand victims, on paper, and you’re supposed to believe this was just a messy case that slipped through the cracks…

They think you are a fucking fool who is just going to continue to yell about RACISM, ICE, and TRUMP while they promote pedophiles, evil humans, and steal your money.

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The part that should make you angry isn’t only what he did

It’s what the system did around it…

The Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility reviewed the handling of the case in 2007–2008 and documented that victims weren’t brought into the process before the deal with Epstein was signed.

That’s not “maybe they weren’t” or “allegedly they weren’t”; it’s documented that the victims were excluded from the process.

If you’re a normal person, you will get crushed by the system for any paperwork mistakes you make. In this case, the system made paperwork errors that protected the guilty and kept the innocent victims confused and powerless.

REAL PROOF AND EXAMPLES

• Victims weren’t consulted before the deal was offered and signed by Epstein. The government did not consult with the victims before signing the NPA (Non-Prosecution Agreement) with the black soul that was Jeffrey Epstein.

• Epstein was given protection. The non-prosecution agreement offered includes immunity language that extended beyond Epstein (as described in filings and reviews) and stripped the victims of their right to exercise it.

• A federal court case exists because a victim said, “They did this in secret.” The case involving Courtney Wild centers on claims that prosecutors secretly negotiated and executed a non-prosecution agreement without honoring basic victim rights.

• The courts describe Epstein as a “sex trafficker and child abuser.” That language appears in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit opinion; he facilitated the isolation, rape, and silencing of underage victims.

• Even after all of this, releases are still controlled and filtered. On January 30, 2026, the DOJ announced another massive release, over 3 million additional pages, plus thousands of videos and hundreds of thousands of images, and also explained the categories withheld/redacted for legal reasons.

Read those bullets again and notice the pattern of secrecy, control, and technicalities provided all while victims are treated like an afterthought.

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The darkest lines I found in the record so far…

These fucked my brain up a little:

“over ten thousand downloaded videos”

“confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.”

“images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors”

“The government failed to consult with the victims before Epstein was offered a deal, which he signed.”

If that doesn’t make you angry, it should at least make you suspicious of anyone who tells you “the system works.”

Our government is broken and is willing to do whatever it can to maintain control and power over its citizens. It is broken, run by evil people, and this is just what we were able to discover; how much more is hidden, that would make these files nothing but a drop in the ocean of horrible atrocities kept out of the newspapers?

So what do we do with that anger?

1. Stop letting the algorithm pick your moral priorities. If you can get fired up for a trending headline, sports, or whatever the talking box that is your TV says you should get fired up about, then you can get fired up for proven institutional failure involving children. If you can memorize talking points, you can read the quotes above and repeat them until people stop pretending this is “old news.”

2. Aim your anger where it matters. Not at your neighbor with the wrong sticker, at the mechanisms that allow sealed deals, quiet negotiations, and victims being sidelined while powerful defendants get “special handling.” That’s not a left-or-right problem; it’s untreated rot in the system's DNA.

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Most pages won’t address this clearly because clarity has consequences.

Clarity makes enemies, and it forces people to admit the obvious, which is, “this wasn’t just a monster, this was a system that could be negotiated with.” And now you have a decision to make…

Will you continue to blindly support politicians and governing bodies because you’ve been told you “have to follow the rules” or will you start to ask questions, stand up for yourself, and support the publications which are sharing the truth?

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If you’re sick of being emotionally hijacked by distraction while documented evil gets handled with kid gloves, subscribe. I’m going to keep putting the receipts in plain English, so regular people can see what’s actually happening, without needing a law degree or a political tribe.

- Zac Small

These weren’t dramatic, rock-bottom fears; they were subtler than that, more dangerous to a degree because they weren’t dramatic, and they lived in the background and shaped how I moved through life.

I told myself I was fine, but what I didn’t realize was how much mental space those fears were occupying until sobriety gave me clarity.

The first fear was one no parent likes to admit out loud.

I feared that if one of my kids got seriously sick or injured in the evening, I wouldn’t be in a state of mind to act as effectively and efficiently as I would otherwise be able to.

I feared an accident, a fever, a phone call from my child, who may be at a friend’s house late at night, a split-second emergency that required calm, decisive action, and that I might hesitate, second-guess, or worse, be unable to drive.

That fear is gone now.

I live in a constant state of readiness and can always get behind the wheel, control my emotions, and show up fully present and prepared.

That change alone has brought a level of peace I didn’t know I was missing.

The second fear centered on my brain and long-term health.

I worried about cognitive decline, especially with things like Alzheimer’s and dementia…

I don’t feel it in some abstract way, but rather, in a deeply personal one.

Alcohol is not neutral when it comes to the brain; it increases inflammation, disrupts neurotransmitters, and interferes with sleep, which is when the brain performs its most important maintenance.

Removing alcohol allowed my nervous system to downshift, inflammation began to decrease, and my thinking has become sharper, my memory improved, and the mental fog lifted.

The body can repair itself when it’s no longer fighting a toxin every day, and from all that I have read, neuroplasticity improves, sleep stabilizes, and the brain regains its ability to regulate mood, focus, and memory better than before...

That fear I had has been replaced with confidence in my body’s ability to heal, and I know that in the future I will never look back and say, “I wish I took better care of my brain” because now, I am doing my best.

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The third fear was that alcohol was stealing my potential.

Not that alcohol was sucking my soul from my body, but in a less dramatic way, it was making me “less than”.

It was enough to keep me more tired, stressed, and operating below my best. Alcohol slows everything down; it dulled my ambition, increased anxiety, and robbed me of high-quality energy without the addition of caffeine.

When you’re building a business, a family, and a life with intention, you don’t have clarity or drive to spare. Sobriety removed the drag, and now my days are no longer limited by the night before.

My stress tolerance is higher, my focus is clearer, and I can give full effort to the things I care about, instead of rationing energy because I’m depleted from “relaxing” with a drink…

Sobriety didn’t make me superhuman; it made me dependable.

Dropping booze removed the quiet gamble I didn’t realize I was taking every night, which was the risk that something could happen and I wouldn’t be at my best when it mattered most.

As a father, there is no acceptable margin for “good enough.” You don’t get to pause a crisis, reschedule an emergency, or explain to your child that you were just a little off that night, and have no doubt about it, your family will never forget when they needed you, and you weren’t there because you wanted to have liquid poison to “feel good”.

Being clear, capable, and present isn’t a bonus; it’s the baseline that should be a non-negotiable.

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Alcohol took more than I ever admitted, but sobriety gave back something far more valuable, which was the ultimate level of trust in myself, and once you know you’re no longer operating at a deficit, you don’t miss the drink; you wonder why you ever tolerated the risk in the first place.

- Zac Small

A famous man dies a public, violent death, and instead of the surviving spouse disappearing into the private wreckage of real loss, we get a public-facing campaign to capitalize on the momentum behind tragedy.

We’re talking brand momentum, talk shows, podcasts, fireworks, speeches, news interviews, merch, optics, “carry the mission forward,” cash, sales, no kids to be seen, phone calls encouraging workers to keep working, and jokes about Zoom emojis, all included with a bunch of strangers clapping like this is what strength looks like…

And when anyone side-eyes it, the defense comes out, “Everyone grieves differently.”

That’s only something you say when people are doing different (See: Weird) shit…

Yes, people grieve differently, and grief is personal as there’s no single emotional script that everyone follows; but that argument collapses the moment you use it to excuse behavior that isn’t just different, it’s transactional.

There’s a huge difference between:

• Returning to work because you can’t sit still in the silence

and

• Turning your spouse’s death into a content schedule with a checkout link.

There’s a difference between survival and sales.

If I died, my wife wouldn’t be “driving a company forward” as her public priority. Jackie would be grieving the loss of her husband and soulmate; she’d be in black, unable to speak to anyone but our children, and likely hating the world.

This is not because she’s weak, as some have suggested that, “we just don’t get it because we aren’t as strong as Erika is”.

This is not because she can’t handle it, as some have said, “The mission they had is greater than anything you’ve built, so you don’t know” as love is supposed to cost you something when it’s ripped out of your life, and that something should be greater than an earthly business to keep running on schedule.

What we’re watching isn’t just grief

This is a collision of grief and identity economics, where people don’t know who they are without an audience, and where every emotional event gets pressure-washed into “content” before the body is cold.

Erika took this as an opportunity to put herself before the world, instead of protecting the privacy of her grief and being present for her children. If she didn’t and the business fractured, she would lose control, money, relevance, etc. Those things were placed as a higher priority than anything else.

People online have joked that being on stage and tossing merch to a cheering crowd is the final stage of grief.

Here’s the part that has me writing this; after Candace Owens shared the video I linked to above, people were immediately arguing that what we’re witnessing is both “strength” and completely normal…

This is not fucking normal.

Not. At. All.

100%, a person can be composed and still be devastated; a person can be functional and still be shattered. But when the public performance is polished, monetized, and brand-aligned, and when it’s packaged like a product launch, don’t insult everyone’s intelligence by calling it resilience.

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The reason this matters is that it is just another example where the media is brainwashing you into believing abnormal is normal. (2+2=5)

• Kids watch this.

• Spouses watch this.

• People in real marriages watch this and start wondering if devotion is just another role you play until it’s inconvenient.

If the first public priority after loss is “the mission,” then the mission has replaced the marriage in our prioritization of how we structure our loyalty.

Grieve differently, sure, but don’t act like normal people are supposed to applaud a culture where death becomes a funnel, a funeral speech becomes copywriting, and heartbreak becomes branding.

Some things must remain sacred, and if we turn death into merch, we’re not evolving as a society, we’re spiritually decomposing.

- Zachary Small