In this first edition of Irrelevant Wit: we’re shouting for the overlooked, unveiling Aecurus’s raw voice, and teasing generational truths ahead. Plus, a glimpse into self-discovery and the newsletter’s bold mission; question, think, generalize, and grow through applying everything you learn to your own life. Let’s dive in →

I used to think I knew what I wanted to do—what drove me—but after being beaten down by life more times than I can count, I realized I’d been approaching it all wrong. Passion doesn’t strike like lightning. It arrives in whispers I ignored for years. A subtle, persistent sense that something isn’t quite right. Not the nagging from society, but your own voice saying: I’m over this. I’m overwhelmed. Something needs to change.

But what exactly needs to change?

For me, it could be a million things. So, I’ll work on them—one step at a time—sharing my progress through this newsletter while also amplifying stories from others I encounter along the way.

At the start of this piece, I said I knew what I wanted from life—my time, my purpose. Originally, it was simple: I wanted to have an impact. To leave the world a little better than I found it—for myself, the people I care about, and anyone else who might go on to make an impact too.

But it felt too generic. Too scripted.

Coming from a place of untold opportunity, I realized what I truly wanted was to help level the playing field. To create a framework for becoming the best version of yourself—not the version you’re told to be, not the version built solely around self-interest, but someone in between. Someone who creates positive change both for themselves and the world around them.

We’re told that success just takes hard work and dedication. But is that really the key to the lock? Or have we always had the right key—just been trying it on the wrong door?

Find your lock. Unlock your life. And maybe, just maybe, open yourself to a whole new world of possibilities.

I’m here to help along the way.

You can call me Ace.

It’s short for Aecurus. Not sure where my parents got it from—maybe their own obsessions, passed down without explanation. That’s how it often works: names, songs, memories, even fragments of hope—these things get impressed upon us by parents, friends, mentors, enemies. The simplest things can shape a life.

For me, that name sparked a love of mythology. For others, it might be a song that leads to a lifetime of music. These moments—however small—can define us. Stories passed down have moved the minds of generations since the beginning of time. They offer paths to understanding, and through understanding, we can discover where we fit into our own stories.

But today, stories are diced into quantifiable, marketable, bite-sized pieces—easily digestible, yet hollow. They leave us feeling exploited, conflicted, and adrift between what we’re told to believe and what we actually believe.

At best, this digital culture gives you the option to toss your ethics out the window for some fleeting gratification. The joy of discovering who you are has been diluted—replaced by watered-down visions of the dreams we’re told to chase. No wonder so many feel apathetic, or paralyzed by frustration. I know I have.

And then, add on top of that the state of the world…

So, what are the options?

But there’s a third option:
Do something.
Do anything that isn’t fake and might make a dent, even if it’s small. Especially if it’s small.

This newsletter isn’t about preaching from a pedestal. It’s about digging in the dirt with you.

That’s what this publication is for: to help you figure out how you fit into this chaotic world. And maybe, along the way, I’ll figure it out for myself too. Because these problems—social, spiritual, systemic—have been passed down for generations. And they’re not going to solve themselves. Each of us has a role to play in the mess, and the more of us that engage with it consciously, the more likely we’ll actually get somewhere.

Welcome to Irrelevant Wit—a newsletter scribbled from the margins, where the forgotten, the mocked, and the misfit voices gather not to shout into the void, but to whisper through the cracks. This isn’t your perfectly manicured self-help digest. It’s a rebellion of the footnotes. A dispatch for the dismissed. A Molotov cocktail of reflection, sarcasm, and maybe—just maybe—hope.

I started this journey in rage. The kind of rage that makes you want to torch the whole thing and start again. I wrote to a friend I’ll never see again. I scrawled manifestos on napkins. I dreamed of the system crumbling, of truth rising from the ashes like a flaming middle finger.

But rage, like a Red Bull-fueled all-nighter, always crashes.

And when mine did, I found myself somewhere quieter. Not peaceful—just quieter. A graveyard of my own excess. That’s where the real questions began whispering. Not “how do we burn it all down?” but “what can we plant in the rubble?” and “what if we tried something else?”

This newsletter lives in that weird, liminal space: between clarity and chaos, between burnout and belief. It’s for those who’ve stopped trusting everything, but haven’t stopped caring.

So what can you expect?

– Stories from forgotten corners: The kid drowning in debt but dreaming bigger than his pockets. The aunt who still laughs at dinner even though she knows the world is broken.
– Interviews with people fumbling toward purpose—and those who found it in the strangest places.
– Letters from fellow wanderers, trying to make sense of it all, one midnight spiral at a time.
– Sarcasm. Lots of it. Not because we don’t care, but because caring hurts—and satire cauterizes wounds.

I’ll be your Ace in the hole. Not your guru. Not your influencer. Just another confused rebel trying to turn all this noise into something resembling a signal.

Because finding yourself isn’t a destination—it’s a repeated act of defiance in a world that profits off your confusion.

So maybe it starts here. In the cracks.

Expect nothing.
Find something.
Become anything.

From the footnotes,
Aecurus Dione

To whomever it may concern,

I’m Aecurus—yeah, I made it up because “irrelevant nobody” didn’t have the same ring. I’m scribbling this to you, or maybe to the echo of a friend I lost to silence(I’ll touch base on them later to help you fully understand my past), my pen scratching out a beat I can’t quite dance to yet. I’m no hero, just a guy with a head full of questions and a knack for turning them into something that might sting. This is my start, my way of saying I exist, even if the world scrolls past me like I’m fine print.

I’m holed up in a place that’s more shadow than home, a spot where the air feels thick with unwritten stories. It’s not much—a flickering bulb, a creaky chair—but it’s mine, a launchpad for whatever comes next. I’ve got a voice, raw and unpolished, and I’m itching to use it, not to burn anything down (yet), but to figure out who I am amid the noise. I picked this name because it feels like a dare, a middle finger to being told what to do, and it’s the banner I’ll wave as I dive into what’s ahead.

This isn’t the end of the tale—it’s the beginning. Next, I’ll unravel what it means to be part of a generation that’s supposed to not matter, a thread I’ll pull in "Generational Relevance." After that, I’ll peel back the layers of self in "The Inverse Gobstopper," where the real digging starts. For now, I’m just setting the stage, a wonton soldier with a pen, promising more than I know how to deliver. All I know is the voids silence— but who knows— if I’m lucky it might just answer back.

From a nobody with a name,

Ace

Is my generation, born during a time of relative comfort, destined to be less resilient than those who came before us? Are we lazy, or are we dreamers? We've inherited ease, sure, but we’ve also inherited confusion, division, and the heavy weight of stories we didn’t ask for but still have to live with. Our politics are split, our climate’s unstable, and the idea of a shared truth feels like it’s slipping away—not because we don’t know where we’re going, but because we’ve been handed a map that leaves too much out.

We were told the world was figured out, that the roads ahead were paved, that everything was already settled. But as we try to walk those roads, we realize they were never as straight as we thought. In the glossy, bright cities, the ground shifts beneath our feet. What we were promised wasn’t the future but an illusion, built on the quiet erasure of people and places that didn’t fit into the story we were sold.

And yet, here we are—facing a world in which we’re told we don’t belong, or that we’re just “too much” for it to handle. Our identities, whether rooted in culture, heritage, or personal experience, become both refuge and battleground. We are constantly told who we should be, but the truth is, the world isn’t as simple as those who came before us tried to make it seem.

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “existence precedes essence”—we’re not born with a fixed purpose, we have to make our own meaning. But with that freedom comes responsibility. Sartre warned us about the temptation to fall into “bad faith”—that is, to escape the weight of freedom by pretending to follow some pre-written script. This pressure is everywhere now. Culture is sold back to us as something we should consume, not create. We’re told who to be before we’ve even asked who we really are. We curate identities, defend inherited ideas, cling to the performance of being certain. But certainty is no virtue if it blinds us to the mess and majesty of a world that thrives on our silence. Sartre’s message is simple: to live authentically, we need to stop letting others decide for us.

But figuring out who you are isn’t easy. Søren Kierkegaard talked about how dread is the price of freedom—the vertigo that comes with having so many choices. When everything around us feels overwhelming, the temptation is to just pick a path that feels easy. But Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” isn’t about running from the tough questions; it’s about jumping into the unknown and finding meaning in the uncertainty. Maybe, for us, that leap is embracing all the things society tells us to hide—our histories, our identities, our cultures—and seeing them as strengths, not weaknesses.

In the world we live in now, George Orwell’s warnings about the manipulation of language hit harder than ever. Words like “illegal” are used to dehumanize people, to strip away their humanity in favor of a neat narrative that fits the status quo. Orwell reminded us that the words we use can shape the truth we see—and today, it’s more important than ever to understand how language can be twisted to control the story. We need to ask ourselves: whose truth are we really hearing? Who gets to decide what’s real?

Susan Sontag warned us about the numbness that comes with scrolling past suffering on our screens, where images of injustice are consumed like entertainment. We can’t afford to become numb. We need to re-engage with the world around us and ask what it means to be human in a time when we’re more connected than ever but still so divided. It’s easy to scroll past the struggles of others and tell ourselves we’re powerless, but Sontag’s point is that by allowing ourselves to feel, we can start to break the walls that separate us.

Joan Didion taught us the power of self-respect—how to stay true to what we see, even when the world around us tells us we’re wrong. She showed us that it’s not enough to just go along with the narrative. In a world where entire groups are pushed to the side, where some lives are treated as less valuable than others, Didion’s insistence on truth feels like an act of resistance. We need to stay grounded in our own perspectives, especially when the dominant story seeks to erase us.

Hunter Thompson, known for his wild style, turned truth into exaggeration to make it impossible to ignore. He showed us that sometimes you have to amplify the absurdity of the world to make people listen. And Edward Abbey, who fought for wild spaces and the freedom that comes with them, reminded us that we need to fight for what can’t be tamed or controlled, that civilization without conscience becomes a cage. These thinkers understood that the wild parts of life—the messy, complicated bits—are the ones we should pay attention to. Maybe it’s time we stop pretending everything can be made neat and simple.

So maybe we’re not lazy. Maybe we’re not lost. Maybe we’re learning what it means to exist in a world where the comfort we were promised is fading. We’re not just searching for the answers handed down to us, we’re learning to create our own truths. It’s a truth that doesn’t rely on erasing parts of ourselves to fit into someone else’s box.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “God is dead.” It wasn’t to dismiss faith, but to acknowledge that the structures we once relied on to give our lives meaning have crumbled. In the silence left behind, it’s up to us to create something new. Nietzsche challenges us to be the artists of our own lives, to forge meaning from experience, culture, survival, and solidarity. It’s a reminder that the power to shape our world is in our hands.

But there is a limit to the will alone. When creation falters, when solitude feels unbearable, when reason cracks under the weight of uncertainty—Kierkegaard enters. Not to rescue us with clarity, but to say: leap. Leap not away from doubt, but through it. The absurd is real, and so is the freedom to respond with faith—not in dogma, but in becoming.

The leap of faith is not surrender. It is defiance at the edge of despair. It is Nietzsche’s abyss, stared into fully, and then stepped across—not because we know what’s on the other side, but because we choose to go together, eyes open, hearts aflame. To leap now, in our time, is to reach out across differences—not as saviors or critics, but as fellow humans. It’s not about proving we’re right, or strong, or perfect. It’s about helping each other become whole again, about finding resilience not by mimicking the past, but by creating something better in the cracks of this broken world.

To leap is to affirm life not just once, but again and again. 

And maybe, that’s our calling now—not to rebuild the old world, but to scatter seeds in its ruins, trusting they’ll grow where the cracks let the light in. Like a flower growing through the pavement—small, quiet, and persistent, but beautiful enough to remind us that, even in the toughest conditions, life finds a way to bloom.

—a meditation on self, truth, and layers

We begin not at the surface, but in the center—in a cave carved by memory, instinct, and inheritance. This is our core, the first shelter. Not the world as it is, but the world as we first knew it. A place of shadow and story, soft echo and blind certainty. It is womb-like, familiar, a grime-caked refuge where we’re told our first beliefs. The first layer of the inverse gobstopper.

And then—a knock. A crack. A breeze. Something calls us outward, beyond the boundaries of a world that leaves you wondering what if.

To step outside the cave is not to destroy it. It is to test its limits. We enter the next layer—a wider chamber, a slightly brighter light, a sharper air. Here, the cave becomes visible from without. What once held the whole truth now becomes an earlier version of it. We may rush back to the warmth, or let this new outer layer become our new center. Either way, the motion reveals us, planting seeds in the cracks of our own becoming.

Each person carries their own gobstopper: a layered, concentric spiral of selves and perceptions, all shaped by experience, desire, and fear. My second layer might overlap with your third. Your cave might sit adjacent to mine, unknowable but sympathetic, like voices through thin walls in a city’s peeling room. We trade stories across the divide, shouting truths the powerful prefer to ignore.

In this world, truth is not singular. It is textured, refracted—something that changes color as we shift layers. This doesn’t make it meaningless. It makes it personal. It makes it a journey, one we walk despite being called superfluous.

Susan Sontag might tell us that interpretation is itself a form of layering—a veil we place between sensation and understanding. Orwell would warn us that even caves can be constructed by power, language, and fear—by elites in glass towers who decide who matters. Joan Didion would remind us that we tell ourselves stories in order to live—and some of those stories are walls. Hunter S. Thompson might light his torch and declare, grinning, that the cave is on fire and we’re all dancing inside. Edward Abbey would urge us to break free, to feel the earth outside the cave, to live deliberately—even if it means solitude in a boneyard of our own excess.

But the layers are not escape routes. They are opportunities. You do not shed the center. You stretch it. You allow it to expand, absorb, adapt, like a seed taking root in defiance of the sands of time.

And yet—we still carry our caves with us. Each layer we occupy becomes, in time, another cave. Comfort solidifies into dogma. Belief stiffens into identity. So we must knock again. Ask again. Step again, even when the world’s strings pull us back.

You choose whether to return—whether to defend the heart of your cave or risk allowing the next ring of your gobstopper to become your new shelter, a new truth south of our high horses.

There is no final layer. No flavor that tells you: this is it. This is truth. This is self. There is only the next knock. The next soft light, the next leap into becoming.

What you find outside may thrill or terrify you. It may unmake you. But that, too, is part of the absurd freedom to create your own meaning.

Some of us go in circles. Some stay curled in the center. Some build maps. Some build doors.

But for those willing to walk outward, there is no final truth—only the growing freedom of knowing that all truths begin as caves, and can be outgrown.

Let each layer be both a boundary and a bridge.

Let your gobstopper never stop.

And let each knock on the wall be answered not with fear, but with a flower pressed into the crack, blooming defiantly in the light beyond.

We rise—
not from hashtags’ glow,
but from the noise they make,
swallowed whole by a world that insists we matter only when we don’t.
In the TikTok winds,
we sift through lies for anything real,
lavender flowers creeping through cracked pavement,
screaming louder than the algorithms ever could.

In these digital hollows,
a bloom unfurls,
its petals tangled in broken code,
and we follow it,
not because we know where it leads,
but because it dares to grow where everything else is decaying.

Rogue spirits,
we scatter petals in the virtual wind,
softly blooming,
even as the noise around us hums,
telling us to fade into the background.
But we’re here,
unraveling the bloom,
trusting that maybe—just maybe—
the cracks will let us in.