Dear Journal,
For years, everyone talked about building a personal brand, and you couldn’t scroll through LinkedIn without seeing reminders to market yourself, refine your image, or sharpen the story you present to the world. It sounded strategic and polished, the kind of professional advice that promised momentum if followed closely enough; yet, over time, something about the entire approach began to feel hollow. People gradually started packaging themselves like products, trimming away their quirks, hiding their doubts, and sanding down the uneven edges that make someone feel human. The more polished the presentation became, the further it drifted from the person beneath it, and eventually the curated identity grew large enough to begin overshadowing the lived one. That slow separation created a divide that was initially easy to ignore, but once it took hold, it became surprisingly difficult to overcome.
Personal branding encourages you to highlight only the most digestible parts of yourself, and in the process, you learn to project confidence even when you’re overwhelmed, to speak with certainty even when you’re still sorting through your thoughts, and to adjust your personality to match whatever tends to perform well rather than whatever feels honest. Over time, that pressure to smooth every surface and polish every edge strips away the depth you once relied on. Layers of experience are replaced with slogans, taglines, and simplified talking points shaped for engagement rather than truth. When you edit yourself long enough, the edited version begins to function independently, and before you realize it, you’re living alongside a polished mask that draws more of the attention while the real you grows quieter despite containing the substance, humor, contradiction, and complexity that actually matter.
There’s a different way to show up in the world, one that rejects the idea of presentation as your primary task and instead roots itself in meaning, and I’ve come to understand that approach as personal lore. In the movie Big Fish, the father tells grand stories about his life, pieces of memory that swell to impossible proportions until even his own son assumes they’re exaggerations. Only later does he understand that the stories weren’t meant to deceive. They were the father’s way of interpreting the world, giving ordinary moments weight and color so they would stand out in memory, and turning lived experience into something that felt worth carrying forward. His stories didn’t sell an image. They revealed something true through creativity, imagination, and heart.
That’s the difference personal lore can make. It’s the way you tend your memories, the meaning you attach to your experiences, and the small myths you build around the moments that shape you. Lore doesn’t ask for approval, performance, or optimization. It offers a way of living that allows the ordinary to feel significant and the mundane to feel rich in texture. Instead of hiding imperfections, it weaves them into the story, turning every dent and flaw into something that adds depth rather than detracts from it. Lore refuses to flatten you. It invites your identity to expand.
Last weekend, my county held its annual Hiking Spree, a tradition so simple that many people overlook it, yet it felt meaningful the moment I arrived. The kickoff event featured volunteers distributing wooden hiking sticks carved from local tree limbs, each one shaped by the landscape around us. I picked one that felt balanced in my hand, named it Deepstride, and immediately began imagining where it came from, what woods it once stood in, and what memories it might gather as the years unfold. In that act of naming, the stick became something more than a tool. It became a character in the broader story of my life, a companion that would develop history each time I carried it along a trail. Now, when I see it leaning in the corner, I don’t just see sanded wood. I see a piece of my lore, something that will grow in meaning every time I take it with me.
Living with a sense of lore shifts your focus inward, away from polishing your external image and toward cultivating the meaning that already exists within you. When you stop sculpting how you appear and start honoring how you live, something fundamental changes. Authenticity stops functioning as a performance. It becomes a natural extension of the care you give your experiences, your voice, and your curiosity. Lore doesn’t need refinement to feel true. It only needs presence, attention, and the willingness to let your life unfold as a story rather than a product.
Sincerely,
Your Pal,
James