No, young men aren't okay. I know because I've been there.

Or, how writing a fantasy novel no one read helped me get my life on track

21-27 were the worst years of my life. When I was meant to be growing, starting my career, winning, I was stagnant. I felt like a loser.

I became despondent and nihilistic. I wanted to give up.

I remember one day, in my bedroom (literally the converted attic at my parents' house) thinking, maybe I'll just stay here. Maybe this is it. Is it so bad? Nothing matters anyway. I'll be dead in 60 years, maybe less. No one will miss me. Maybe I just eat my parents' food and play videogames forever.

I hated any job I'd ever had other than the one coaching sport at the local high school.

The thought of life in an office made me nauseous and panicked.

The idea of just doing nothing felt so logical. So pure. So safe.

I thought that the best thing was for me to just fade away and take up as little space as possible.

I was wrong, but it would take me years to figure that out.

What’s going on with men?

Over the last several years there have been a number of well publicised ways that men are struggling. The narrative resonates with me deeply. Not necessarily on every point, but when it comes to the general sense of loser-dome, and hopelessness, I get it. I was there.

Some parts of the “men are falling behind” narrative are contentious and the picture isn’t always clear. It’s true that young men are much less likely to hold a bachelor’s degree than young women but headlines about an emerging “reverse gender pay gap” are exaggerated. Most young men still out earn most young women by a little bit.

In general millennials have less wealth than Gen X and Boomers did at the same age. Especially those without a college degree. Some people argue this hits men harder as society tells them they must provide for their family which is more difficult in a challenging economy.

Young men are struggling to find people to date, with 63% of young men reporting that they’re single, compared with 34% of young women.

Young men are three times more likely to die by suicide than young women. With the authors of the cited study stating that, “In males, a predisposition to suicidal behavior may be moderated by hopelessness traits, disruptiveness and conduct problems, and antisocial disorders (highly related to aggressiveness).”

There is a sense among many young men that they are poorer, less capable, and less cool than they should be.

The manosphere tries to hide this by puffing out its chest and pretending to be an alpha. It doesn't seem to work; men involved in “toxic-masculinity” have higher rates of mental health challenges and don’t seek help when they are struggling mentally.

What turned things around for me?

When I think about what I needed in those years, it was purpose. It wasn't status. It wasn't a big car and big muscles. It wasn't a huge bitcoin portfolio. It was a need to feel like my life mattered and that there was some point for me to actually live it.

So, how did I find meaning? It wasn’t by getting wealthier or having bigger muscles. Two things helped me:

1. I started writing a fantasy novel. No one ever read that novel outside my writing group but it gave me a purpose every morning. A goal that was just for me. Not about external posturing. Research shows that creative projects (whether that's writing a book, starting a podcast, or founding a company) dramatically increases measures of life satisfaction. This was the one crucial thing I did. It gave me an immediate sense of progress and confidence. Achieving goals is so important. But this one was fully intrinsic. It wasn't a degree or exam. It was actually something society told me was a waste of time. And it felt amazing.

2. My wife and I started a business together helping other creative types to make art more consistently and easefully. So, yes, making more money was part of it. But, I think the biggest bump in my wellbeing came from the sense that, through our business, I was helping other people and making society a little bit better. Most of the mental health gains came in the early stages of the business when we weren’t making much money. When I was working on those first books, courses, and episodes of the podcast with Amie, I felt like I was doing something in alignment with myself and satisfying a primal need to be helpful.

Neither of these things were particularly “masculine” but helped me, as a young man adrift, anchor myself a little bit more to the real world.

It sounds trite, but, to stop myself from stagnating, I simply had to find a way to grow. I learned new skills, took those first tentative steps towards goals that were mine and no one else’s, and learned that failure wasn’t as scary as I thought it was. I anchored myself to a daily task that gave me momentum and found that I could be helpful.

What does it mean to be a man?

Most young men don’t need to dominate, to win, or to be an alpha. That’s following someone else’s script.

There’s a very strong cultural myth about what it means to be a man which is mostly bullshit.

There may be some traits or preferences that, on average, more men exhibit, but that average doesn’t tell you much about any one individual. The hundreds of millions of men who aren’t anything like that average then constantly compare themselves to something arbitrary and useless to them.

It is a simple statistical fact that most men won’t want to be the “ideal man”. Therefore, they are grating against an ideal that they inherently reject. It is a boring, one dimensional model of manhood that may serve some people, but certainly not most.

Finding my identity outside of the simplistic narrative of “manhood”, helped me feel more confident and settled. I was able to let go of the idea that I had to be a certain way to be a “real man”.

Writing a fantasy book isn’t the usual advice you get on youtube to help you feel “more like a man”, but it helped me to feel more like the man I wanted to be.

I do think it’s important to find out what it means to “be a man”. But there’s going to be a huge difference between what that means to me, and what it might mean to someone else.

If you want my list of recommendations for how to be a “real man”, I wrote a list.

If you have a young man in your life who's struggling, please send this to them and ask them to reach out if they need support