Life Coaching Now Available

Obligatory picture because people only click on links with pictures. I think it’s pretty. Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

I get a lot of emails from people who want help: newly diagnosed borderlines looking for anyone willing to say they’re not evil; people struggling with excessive guilt; people with stigmatized sexual preferences; people who want permission to be trans or not to be trans.

Sometimes, I hope, I’ve managed to help. But often I just don’t have time to write a detailed response to the people pouring their hearts out to me in email.

As a good capitalist, I know that if there’s a lot of demand for a service that I don’t have time to provide, I ought to charge money for it. So I have decided to sell my advice for money.

The word for this is “life coach.” I’m not going to lie, I procrastinated on this for six months in part because I was dying of embarrassment about being a life coach. But I promise I will not try to sell you supplements or talk about The Secret or attuning to the vibrations of the universe.

I also, legally, can’t provide you therapy! I can’t diagnose or treat any mental health condition. I also don’t have any official therapist training, any credentials, or any experience unless you count answering anguished emails. Hire me at your own risk.

In general, I tend to be:

• Practical, empirical, and solution-focused. I don’t have a ton of patience for insight-oriented work or deep epiphanies, and I’m kind of suspicious that all that stuff is made up anyway.

• A good listener. I think I’m often basically a rubber duck: I go “hm” and ask questions and people figure it out for themselves.

• Non-judgmental. If it works for you, then it works, even if it’s not what I would do in a million years. And I don’t think your problems make you a bad person.

Historically, I have found that I provided the most useful advice to:

• People who aren’t sure whether they’re trans or not.

• People dealing with sexual issues, particularly:

  • Men who were harmed by toxic feminism but who don’t want to become antiwoke assholes.

  • People deconstructing Christian purity culture.

  • Anyone who wants advice from someone who doesn’t judge anything and is impossible to shock.¹

• People who are stressed out about effective altruism and want support from someone who already knows about short AI timelines, earning to give, etc.

• Mentally ill people who want advice from an equal who’s been there, alongside any psychiatric treatment they want to receive.

But if you aren’t in any of these groups, feel free to reach out and I’ll try to figure out if I think I can help.

My services are offered on a sliding scale from $20/hour to $200/hour—I want this to be accessible to people regardless of how much money they have.

This is all very experimental—I’m trying to figure out how much demand there is, how much I enjoy it, whether it fits in well with the rest of my life/career, etc. Like I said above, I have no credentials and no particular reason to believe I’m any good at it. If you’re hiring me now, you’re the person I’m learning on! But you can look at the rest of my blog and see the kind of advice I give and the kind of perspective I take on things. And if you think that what I have to say might help, try booking a (free!) 20-minute call so we can talk about whether I agree.

1. I am sure there exists some sexual choice that shocks me but I haven’t encountered it and I have encountered some incredibly weird shit.