Last week we hosted the first gathering. More on that below.

It's a beautiful time of year. I've been spending as much time outside as possible this week. Working outside, eating outside, just being out there. The average person spends about 90% of their day indoors. I'm trying to be on the other end of that, although a desk job makes that harder than I'd like.

I'm being honest with myself: I've been a little too relaxed the past six months with the baby. Not terrible, just coasting and making more excuses than I should. Spring feels like the right time to reset. Take inventory. Get sharper.

Health is one of the few things we actually have a ton of control over. The financial system, the political system, the job market, all of it feels like it's shifting under our feet. Most of that we can't do much about. But what we eat, how we move, how much time we spend outside, that's always up to us. It's easy to make excuses when life is busy, but if we're being honest with ourselves, that's all they are, excuses. It starts with health.

I'll be spending more time in the coming weeks looking into how to grow this publication so that by the time May's gathering comes around we'll continue to grow and expand.

Last week we hosted the first gathering at McNally's in Chestnut Hill. Eight people showed up. No photo because I forgot to take one. Next time.

Here's what stood out. Everyone at that table has people in their life they care about. Good friends, close family. But there was a shared feeling that something is missing in a lot of those relationships. Depth. Most conversations stay on the surface. The game last night. Weekend plans. Work complaints. And that's fine, but it's not enough.

The people who came are builders. Some run their own businesses. Some walked away from the corporate path because it wasn't giving them what they needed. Others are exploring what's possible with AI and new technology. What they have in common is that they're not waiting around for instructions, they are actively paving their own way.

The best part of the night was that there was very little small talk. People showed up ready to talk about what's actually going on in their lives, what they're building, what they're struggling with, what they see coming that most people around them don't.

That's what this is for.

If you were there and you've had a week to sit with it, I'd love to hear from you. Reply to this email and tell me what worked, what didn't, and what would make the next one better.

If you weren't able to make it, I'd still like to hear from you. What would get you out? Is it the format, the location, the timing? Let me know and I'll factor it in.

The next gathering will be in May. Details coming soon.

Last week I wrote about Franklin half-dead on a frozen lake in New York, a mission most men even half his age would have turned down. While Franklin was up north, back in Philadelphia another member of Congress was working on a different piece of the same problem.

By the spring of 1776, delegates from several colonies had started pulling John Adams aside and asking him the same thing: if we actually break from Britain, what kind of government do we build? North Carolina's delegates were being called home to draft a new state constitution and they wanted Adams' thinking. He didn't have time to write a full treatise, so he dashed off a shorter sketch, basically a letter-length outline, and handed copies to the men who needed them. Then George Wythe of Virginia saw it and wanted one too. Adams had already given his copies away, so he sat down and rewrote it from memory. He kept doing that for anyone who asked.

Eventually the letters got published as a pamphlet, printed by John Dunlap right here in Philadelphia, advertised for sale on April 22nd. The full title was Thoughts on Government. In it, Adams laid out a framework for three separate branches of government, an executive, a two-house legislature, and an independent judiciary, all with checks and balances between them. This was a direct rebuttal to Paine's Common Sense, which had proposed a simpler single-body legislature. Adams thought Paine's plan was too easy to corrupt. Paine actually showed up at Adams' lodgings to confront him about it. Adams' framework is more or less what the country ended up using. Virginia, North Carolina, and New Jersey all built their state constitutions from it that same year, and the federal Constitution a decade later followed the same blueprint.

I think there's a parallel to how we're approaching things here at Sound Life Philly. Of course, we are not doing anything close to the scale of what is being discussed here. But the through line is that it's one thing to recognize that the existing systems are broken and that they are no longer serving us. Whether it's the financial system, healthcare, political system, it's all intertwined and it's all deteriorating. That was certainly a common thread at the gathering last week. Most people will just tune it out and complain without really looking for solutions or willingness to build anything themselves. The question isn't what's broken. The question is what do we build.

That's Adams' question. Paine gave people the courage to walk away from the old system. Adams sat down and started designing the next one. He wrote in the pamphlet that there is no higher calling than the work of figuring out how people should govern themselves. I'm obviously not designing a new government at a tavern in Chestnut Hill. But the impulse is the same. Stop waiting for things to get better and start building something that works.

If you haven’t done so already, please reply to this email and let me know the following:

What part of the Philadelphia area are you in?
What are your favorite local spots — restaurants, farms, trails, taverns?
What would make this community useful to you?

I want to build the most valuable community, your input matters a lot.

Sound Life Philly is in its early stages, and your help growing it matters more now than it ever will later. If this resonated, forward it to someone in the Philadelphia area who should be part of this newsletter and community.

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