WTF is up with Charlotte?

I keep ending up in North Carolina, ironically a place I lived in from age two to age five.

The state that was the birthplace of my earliest memories — where dad would take me to fly kites in a mini plane field in the woods (because kites are more affordable than airplanes), and where mom once had to vacuum fire ants off me because I was picking blackberries in a ditch full of anthills (dumbass).

It was the state that I spent every waking moment with my parents, GrandMO and GramPo. Where dad taught me to ride my bike and I fell off and got a massive goose egg. Where the corner diner was also the old folks home and the waitresses, my babysitters.

It was the state I broke my arm on a tire swing at a “Christian school” I went to K-1st at in a trailer park, and ended up with a wrist-to-armpit camouflage cast because they’d run out of hot pink, and those are clearly interchangeable.

We were very poor when I lived in NC. Dad was making $8k a year in the army. But I have all the best memories. And we had each other.

So we weren’t poor at all.

I just got back from a quick trip to Charlotte, and my brain is buzzing.

Three days of photo shoots, podcast recordings, and creative business meetings with my friend Carla at the helm — the kind of collaboration and creativity that makes you feel alive again.

Carla and I became close after our friend Matt passed away in December 2024. The one I wrote about in the closing segment of my TEDx talk. Carla was at the live show.

Loss has this weird way of expanding your circle, if you let it.

What started as shared grief became this amazing friendship and deeply creative respect that keeps surprising both of us.

Her podcast is called "Rewiring with Carla V" — which feels like the perfect word for what we've both been doing. Taking the broken circuits from loss and trauma and figuring out how to make them power something new.

The episode will drop in a few weeks, and of course, I’ll share it here.

It’s funny how the best creative breakthroughs happen when you're working alongside someone who's doing their own rewiring.

Rewiring your mind is a solo project, but it helps when you have another electrician around to check your work. It's like trying to see your own back tattoo — you need another person to tell you if it looks good or if you've made a terrible mistake, like my friend who ended up with a cross-eyed leopard.

The Hustle

Creative bottlenecks aren't actually about lacking ideas. They're about lacking the right person or people to bounce those ideas off of.

I've been stuck on a few projects since February, when dad went into the hospital and I had to hit pause on my outside world. I’d consider this trip to be the jumper cables to my dying battery.

Just a few days in Charlotte reminded me what it feels like when your brain is actually firing on all cylinders again. And exactly how much go-go energy I have when all the work is creative-focused.

When I was in survival mode for months, creativity got pushed to the back burner. And without creativity, my excitement, momentum and ideas began to flatline too.

The projects that felt overwhelming after losing dad suddenly feel manageable. The ideas I'd been avoiding because they seemed too complicated have begun reorganizing themselves into a puzzle where the missing pieces are clear.

My brain wasn't broken — it was just redirecting all its energy toward grief and logistics and making sure everyone I loved was okay.

Travel has always been my reset button: different environment, different energy, different perspective on the same problems. This trip felt different. Less about escaping and more about plugging back in. Less about running away from a daunting pile of catch-up work and more about remembering what it feels like to create something just because you want to. And because you get to work with great people.

I came home with a notebook full of ideas, a phone full of new contacts, and actual excitement about projects I'd been honestly dreading.

Not because Charlotte is magical, but because I'm finally ready to be excited about things again. And I have the right circle to create magic with.

The rewiring isn't happening in the collaboration rooms or creative meetings. It's happening in the quiet spaces between — when you realize you're thinking about problems differently, approaching challenges with more curiosity than anxiety, and saying yes to things that scare you in a good way instead of a bad way.

The Chill

The weirdest part about working on yourself is watching it affect people around you without you even trying.

Last night, while I was unpacking from Charlotte and processing everything that happened, my mom texted me a video: Napoleon Hill speaking about how God breaks you before he blesses you. Not because I'd recommended him to her, but because she'd discovered him on her own.

My mom has been dealing with losing dad with an entire extra layer — the financial stress, the paperwork, the reality of rebuilding your entire life at 62 when you’d been married for over 40 years.

Today would have been mom and dad’s 42nd wedding anniversary. March 31, 1984.

Now she’s beginning to realize the importance of rewiring herself in this uncharted frontier — seeking out what she needs and finding her way to the same principles I've been studying for years. Different path, same destination.

Genuine transformation is magnetic. When you're actually doing the work on yourself, not just talking about it or posting about it, other people are affected. They start asking different questions. They get curious about their own stuck patterns. They begin their own rewiring projects.

I've been so focused on my own growth this past year — processing grief, building my career differently, choosing ease over struggle — that I didn't realize how much my approach was influencing people around me. Not through lectures or advice, but through subtle examples.

Mom sending me that Napoleon Hill video felt like validation that we're both on the right track. Two different generations, two completely different life circumstances, both figuring out how to build something meaningful from a broken pile of shit.

The rewiring effect is about becoming the kind of person whose growth gives others permission to grow too. It's contagious in the best possible way.

If mom's going to start sending me Napoleon Hill videos on what would have been her wedding anniversary, we're both clearly doing something right. Or we've both completely lost it. Either way, we're doing it together.

Someone call a backup electrician just in case…

Upcoming Shows

I dropped in Sunday night to Comedy Club at Ducksworth in Charlotte — I look forward to playing there again it’s a great club!

Next UP:

Decorah, Iowa on April 11th

West Palm Beach, FL April 14-16

The Den Theater Chicago April 23rd

And Madison, WI - Austin TX - Los Angeles in May

Love you all and cheers to the hustle + chill. We all could use a fresh set of wires.

xx NPH