Happy Medium Club: Volume 1
“But you know what else changed me? KFC.”
In Volume 1:
Joel discusses fantasy football and shoes.
Dom over-shares about his mental health journey and Korean Starbucks.
Sam makes everything look so cute and beautiful.
Fantasy Football
🧚♀️✨🔮 🏈🏈🏈
Joel Moisa: There are two rules on which the fantasy football masses agree. First: always draft a running back with your first pick. Second: you must have a clever team name.
So, excuse me, as I break the first rule and use my first three picks to draft wide receivers. As ludicrous as this sounds, just hear me out.
It’ll either be a championship year or, every week, I will spend my time trying to recover from my stupid decision.
Imagine a lineup that includes Justin Jefferson, Cooper Kupp, and Devante Adams. Will it matter that I am starting two mid-level running backs? I think not. Especially with quarterbacks being as helpful as they are, considering their available rushing yards. With the amount of skill I have from Jefferson, Kupp, and Adam—it won't matter if I start Kirk Cousins every week.
I will say I am not deploying this method in a league with money on the line. So I’ll be able to test the waters of my chaotic draft style. The league features 14 teams that will force managers to scour the depths of the waiver wire for players that may produce 5 to 10 fantasy points. Realistically, only four people will care about their team and will try to win, while the others win by mere luck.
Dom and Dana’s Adventure to South Korea
🥰🥰🥰
Dom Johnson: My sister and I hung out in Korea for a week. We spent 70% of our time lying in the apartment, 25% of our time going to convenience stores, and 5% of our time exploring the city. It was one of the best weeks of my life.
One surprising highlight from the trip? Chain restaurants. Comrades, you wouldn’t believe the treasures we experienced at Korea’s take on American fast food joints.
Let me be clear. I’ll never forget my meal at Nice to Meat You, a local Korean BBQ restaurant. It changed me. But you know what else changed me? KFC. The Korean menu at KFC—I mean this as literally as possible—it’s the best fast food experience I’ve ever had.
And I’ll NEVER forget the Korean Starbucks summer menu. Nothing compares to the Purple Sour Blended beverage. It’s God-Inspired! It tastes like plums and nectarines! American Starbucks could never!
My shoes are cooler than yours
👟👟👟
Joel Moisa: I love that I have so many shoes. I also hate how many shoes I have because I only have two feet and can only wear one pair at a time.
I’m not asking to be a spider. I do, on the other hand, want to get my shoe-purchasing under control.
A few of my favorite shoes. I wear them as often as possible.
Nike x Fragment Saccai - Grey: Love my Saccai’s. I have weak ankles, so I’m scared of them since they have such thick soles. The double swoosh is my favorite thing on this pair.
New Balance 990v5 - Grey: I love my 990’s and I probably wear them more than any other shoes because they’re such an easy shoe to stand/walk in. And they’re SUPER easy to style. My wife and brother-in-law have a pair. More importantly, I’ve stood in many lines with old people wearing the same pair.
Salomon XT6 Skyline - Vanilla Ice/Yucca/Sun Baked: These are cool. The colors really make me feel something. I love the cream and orange combination! I can see these shoes being worn for a long time in many different situations.
Blackstock & Weber the Classicó - Chocolate: Love! Wore them on my wedding day. I feel so suave and trendy in these! Also, love the chonky sole!
New Balance 2002r - Olive: 2002r silhouette is one of my favorites. It’s got so much going on with the sole, but the shoes are pretty reserved. They’re also super comfy! And the color, *chefs kiss*
Nike Dunk SB - White black: Not to be confused with pandas lol. Growing up, I always wanted to be a sk8er boy, and now I can with my SBs.
Birkenstock Tokio - Natural Black Leather (mine have a Vibram sole): Goods and Services is an LA-based company that restores and customizes shoes. I sent them my pair, and they added a thick Vibram that made them look punk af and that makes me happy!
Yeezy 350 v2 - Earth: My first expensive shoe! Don’t regret it since the color is clean affff. The 350 is a little outdated, but I still like to wear these occasionally. :)
New Balance 993 x ALD - Brown: ALD & 993s! Sheeeeeeeesh. My two favorite colors collide on the classic 993! I also bought these at retail price from the ALD website.
Dr. Marten Boots: A literal classic!
Project managing my mental health
Dom Johnson: I work in the public relations industry, which means I live in a constant state of chaos. As an inherently scatter-brained human, I need a Dom-Proof system to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
For example, I used soft-coding (powered by Microsoft SharePoint) to create something called the DomBot. He automatically creates meeting agendas and updates status trackers for me. I love him.
Recently, I discovered a significant overlap between my approach to project management and mental health.
A few years ago, when I started taking antidepressants, my psychiatrist told me it would take 6 to 8 weeks before I started feeling the effects. He encouraged me to use a mood journaling app, MindDoc, to track how I felt each day. After a few weeks, the app produced a graph, visualizing my mood progression over time. It was so gratifying to see the line graph slowly start to crawl upwards.
MindDoc is essentially a mental-health version of several status trackers I’ve developed at work. In a way, it helped me realize how much I appreciate adding structure to my mental health journey.
Whether it’s inspirational or dystopian, I’ve co-opted a few tactics from corporate America and repurposed them for my brain.
Drafting Ultra-Niche Lists:
My psychiatrist told me I need to rewire my brain, which is so rude. But he was right.
For me, depression and anxiety often show up via rumination and catastrophic thinking. Simple stressors like “I have a lot of unread emails” can quickly evolve into “I’ll never find happiness, and everyone I know will suffer because of me.”
It’s natural for human brains to fixate on potential threats because our ancestors needed to stay alert about dinosaurs, according to science or something. I zoned out as my psychiatrist explained the details. I zoned back in when he started talking about how grounding exercises can help prevent racing thoughts.
He was right! Now, when I feel myself ruminating, I take out my little notebook and write my little lists to slow down my giant brain.
I started the habit with daily sessions: jotting down five moments of gratitude1 from the day (ex: a baby fell asleep in my arms today; a hot guy laughed at my joke).
Now that I’ve been doing this for over a year, my lists have evolved into delightful obscurity: “5 Underrated Drag Queens” or “5 Drew Barrymore Movies.”
My favorite lists combine obscurity ✨and✨ gratitude: “5 Times Chelsea Made You Laugh by Saying Something Wildly Inappropriate.”
It’s less about the list and more about the listing. Because it’s impossible for me to be anxious when I’m trying to recount “5 Taylor Swift Lyrics That Sound Like Bible Verses.”
I still ruminate sometimes. But I have a little more control. And I’ll say—spiraling about Taylor Alyson Swift is way more fun than spiraling about my own mortality. Or whatever.
Online Shopping via Google Slides:
I can make troublesome decisions while online shopping. I impulse-purchased a couch a few months ago, and she is so cute. But still.
I created a “Things I Want to Purchase” deck in Google Slides. When I’m in the mood for an online shopping binge, I head to West Elm dot com and go absolutely off.
But here’s a twist: I add slides to my deck instead of items to my cart. Then I step away. And when the thrill of the chase subsides, I revisit the deck and consider if I want to spend $80 on a pillow from West Elm.
This deck has saved me billions (billions!) of dollars. Here’s a template.
I shamelessly shared a link with a few of my dearest friends. And low and behold, Joel Moisa bought me the Beautiful 14-Cup Programmable Touchscreen Coffee Maker in Sage Green by Drew Barrymore (Drew! Barry! More!). He also bought me a Google Nest thermostat, but I don’t know how to install it, so please pray for wisdom.
Both of these tools have been invaluable. But not all of my ideas are hits. Here are a few examples that made my therapist chuckle nervously:
I developed the Mr. Right Score, an algorithm ranking my romantic interests against pre-determined criteria.
Created a Reverse Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid (I won’t/can’t explain any further)
I built a dashboard in Google Data Studio to visualize correlations between my Spotify Listening activity and daily mood. For literally no reason.
Thanks for reading!
Drop your email below if you’d like to read the next volume and the next one after that and the next one after that. - Joel & Dom
A very wild ride, but kept me engaged throughout
The mental health section was great. The shoe section was not so great for my mental health haha
I read once that “Self-Proofing” was coined by a brilliant American philosopher and philanthropist, whose name escapes me.