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Hey everybody, we've almost survived another year! Just ten days to go—I hope we all make it!

Looking back on the home stretch of 2025, this is all I have to report since our last issue:

• I built a sexy new gaming PC over 3 days, 120 teeny-tiny M3 screws, and at least ten cups of coffee
• I got my first nose job. I've always had a huge fucking nose, and I'm relieved to finally be able to breathe out of it
• I talked about both of the above on my podcast
• I'm so sick of bracing for the AI bubble to pop, that I've decided to look forward to it instead. Buy popcorn futures, everyone 🍿
• I released POSSE Party, which I'll talk a bit more about later. Also these bits:
  • I spent a couple days documenting the hell that is other people's API keys.
  • I recorded a tutorial video in 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 minute variations. It's a Choose-your-own-attention-span adventure.
  • The first stop on my promotional tour was Aaron's livestream for a tour of the codebase, which you can peruse on GitHub

The day of my surgery, Becky insisted on taking a picture of me after I was told to put on a hairnet but before the drugs kicked in. I was very anxious going into the operation and she was very supportive throughout.

As 2025 winds down, the Searls of Wisdom LT (which stands for "Leadership Team", an acronym I'll be using from now on to amortize the time it took to write this parenthetical) has decided to evolve how it approaches our monthly newsletter operations. Change is hard for many of us, so in lieu of a normal essay about how my feelings inspired certain thoughts that led to valuable insights, I'm just going to explain what you can expect from this newsletter going forward before wishing you better luck next year and sending you on your way.

Merry Divestmas

Some time in June, my brother called me from the U.S. while I was riding a Shinkansen bullet train, at which point I realized I'd never actually taken a call while moving faster than 150 mph before. I remember a certain unease—unsure what the proper etiquette was—so I stepped into the hall between train cars to take it.

Coincidentally, I'd been chewing on a major decision I'd made in isolation (that is, without consulting the LT) over the previous few days that I'd been itching to run by him. But just as I was about to blurt out my news, he beat me to the punch:

"I need to sell this fucking house."

Oof. Gut punch. It had been so great having him five minutes down the road the past few years. And I hadn't done nearly as good a job taking advantage of that proximity to hang out as I'd hoped to. For three or four seconds, I experienced a flood of fear and regret, which primed my mouth muscles to start making a case for why he should stay in his house for my sake. Fortunately, I caught myself and remembered that nobody elected me Guy Who Decides What Everyone Else Does With Their Life. (I ran a spirited campaign, but conceded gracefully in the interest of national unity.)

He explained his reasoning, and his plan made total sense. I won't share more—if he wanted you to know, you'd be reading his newsletter—other than to say he told me he was entering a season of divestment. Of unburdening himself. Of embracing a simpler life.

I've never regretted having or doing less, so I pivoted to supporting him however I could.

And that's how one-third of the closets in my house are now devoted to storing hyper-realistic Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man, and Captain America costumes.

POSSE Party

As I mentioned, my brother beat me to the punch with that phone call, because I had my own news I wanted to get off my chest.

For weeks, I'd been bouncing between decrepit, poorly-ventilated rural motels in what was turning out to be a hot-as-balls early Japanese summer. A few nights prior, I had a fever dream in which I'd successfully released POSSE Party, the SaaS product I'd been working on since January. Like all my dreams, it quickly spiraled into a nightmare. In the dream, I was inundated by time-consuming support requests that lacked any tractable solution—all while living under the constant threat of being banned by the social media platforms whose APIs the app depends on.

Still on the phone with Jeremy, I shared my own news.

"I need to abort POSSE Party. If I release this as a product, the support burden will ruin my life."

His reaction? "Well, yeah, that's been obvious from the start." What the hell man, why didn't you say something? "I thought I did."

I hung up, my need for validation not yet sated. Still titillated by the experience of talking on the phone while traveling at 320 km/h, I FaceTime'd Aaron to get his take.

"Aaron, I've realized that if I release POSSE Party it'll ruin my life."

"No shit, dude."

Goddammit. Some friends. I don't know why I keep them on the LT.

Anyway, I'd publicly committed to releasing POSSE Party by the end of 2025 and I had hundreds of people on the waiting list. I genuinely believed it could give people ownership of their identity and creative work online. Using POSSE Party as a way to post to the social platforms without having to spend time scrolling their feeds myself has greatly improved my life, and I didn't want to deprive others the same opportunity by keeping it to myself. I just had to find a way to publicly release it without falling into the trap of assuming the liability of customer-facing support, whether express or implied.

It took a few months longer than I'd hoped, but I've finally released POSSE Party as a non-commercial, self-hosted app that's free for personal use. You can read more about it or watch one of my tutorial videos on how to set it up over at posseparty.com if you're interested.

And that's the end of the road for POSSE Party. I'll keep using it, and I'll keep improving it to whatever extent serves my interests. But I've divested myself of the perpetual burden that software-as-a-service typically entails. Boom, divested. I gotta admit, I feel a few pounds lighter. (But that also might be on account of the fiber supplements I've started taking recently.)

I'll take that lesson to heart as I undertake my next project. The magic of software is that it can continue working after you stop working on it, but keeping it that way requires intentional planning and intense discipline. Most software businesses fail mightily at this, and wind up being every bit as labor-intensive as running the equivalent physical machinery by hand.

Searls of Wisdom

I started this newsletter in the Spring of 2023. At the time, I was thinking through how to best transition out of full-time employment at Test Double and into a solo career of not working anymore. I started writing this newsletter as a bridge from my reputation as a semi-serious cofounder to my reclaimed identity as an itinerant shitheel.

I had these specific goals in mind:

1. Make sure any of you who knew me only through my business had a way to find me after I'd stepped back from its day-to-day
2. Give myself an outlet to begin unwinding the metaphysical contortions I'd subjected myself to for the sake of my career
3. Improve my writing chops, which had always been choppy, but—lacking intentional practice for years—had grown noticeably choppier

By those measures, I'd say this newsletter has accomplished (for me) what I had set out for it to do (for me). Along with justin.searls.co, I've established an exciting new brand identity which, conveniently, happens to perfectly align with my legal first and last name. When I look at myself in the mirror, I once again see the irreverent free thinker I was at 19 or 20, before I was transformed by the insatiable pursuit of professional validation and financial success. And while it's hard to measure one's growth as a writer, I am once again comfortable distilling disparate observations and amorphous feelings into tidy narrative throughlines and cocksure conclusions—which is good enough for me.

The fact so many of you reply to my little essays and share the positive impact they've had is just icing on the cake. (That's not to diminish your feelings! A cake without icing is just a cancerous muffin, after all.) I'm genuinely glad so many people seem to enjoy following my work, if you can call it that.

But over the past six months, writing this newsletter has gradually transformed from a source of joy I eagerly anticipated each month and into a chore I've begun to dread. At its best, finishing a piece of writing brings the same sense of satisfaction as solving a challenging puzzle. But my increasingly serious and probing essays are starting to feel like a performance—a show that must go on, even when I'd rather be doing something else. And while I enjoy positive feedback as much as the next guy, it's as if each note of appreciation further obliges me to continue pumping out more content. I can sense I'm no longer writing for my own sake, but for yours. Lately, I've found myself pushing through these essays not to write something useful so much as to say something clever. Each month, I try to outdo myself. To what end? Nobody is asking me to do this.

So I'm going to stop.

Going forward, Searls of Wisdom is going to look a little different. I'll continue e-mailing you once a month—that much won't change. And sometimes, sure, it will come with one of my little essays. But most months it'll just be a list of bullet points linking you to other things I did that month. If I'm really strapped for time, you'll receive nothing more than a proof-of-life photo of me holding up that day's newspaper. I hereby divest myself of the self-imposed expectation to spend two days sweating a long-form essay that some unseen number of you will silently judge as sufficiently insightful.

I was going to format the previous paragraph in bold text, but if someone is already in the habit of skimming past these essays, why stop them? This announcement won't affect them, after all.

Next time I start something, I'm going to do a better job remembering that the things I create exist to serve me—not the other way around.

At the end of the day, if every oyster contained a pearl, then pearls would no longer be so precious. So don't be surprised when you crack open next month's newsletter and get nothing but oyster meat. 🦪

What will you divest?

I'm a constitutionally commitment-averse person, and yet I find myself overwhelmed with commitments I've made and for which I have no one to blame but myself. Surely, I can't be alone in this.

So if there's anything for you to take away from this month's newsletter, maybe it will be a reminder to take stock of the shit you're holding onto unnecessarily. Maybe it's time to let go of a physical possession that's more work than it's worth. Maybe there are things you do at work that you don't enjoy doing and which nobody notices or appreciates. Maybe it's time to put your yappy, ungrateful chihuahua to sleep. And if you decide to drop your newborn off at the fire station, who am I to judge?

Merry Divestmas, everyone. 🚮