The Correction: Entry 04 – No New friends

The Correction: Entry 04 – No New friends

I didn’t plan it.

There was no agenda. No calculation. A friend of mine — a creative — had been in a situation for years that I couldn’t stop thinking about. The more I turned it over in my mind the more unjust it felt. Businesses exploiting creatives isn’t new. But when it’s someone you know, someone you respect, it stops being abstract.

So I made a connection. Brought a person with a problem to someone who could help.

That’s how I usually operate. If I’m honest. Someone needs something I can provide — I provide it. Clean, simple, no fuss. Utility in its purest form.

But what I didn’t plan for was what happened next.

The person I introduced them to — we already knew each other. But in that conversation over lunch something else surfaced. Same hatred of unfairness. Same love of Arsenal. A friendship was being born that I didn’t engineer.

I didn’t plan that either.

And when it landed — I didn’t know how to hold it.

My first instinct wasn’t gratitude. It was suspicion. Is this real? Will it last? What do you want?

I am not used to receiving.

The whole architecture of my life has been built around giving. Always the one opening doors. Always the one making things happen for others. And when something comes back — unexpectedly, through a door I didn’t even know I was opening — it feels strange.

Strange because receiving — real receiving, not transactional exchange — requires a different posture entirely. It requires you to accept that someone values your presence without needing anything from you. And I genuinely don’t know how to do that. I never learned.

So now I have a new friend. Drake said no new friends — but I’m taking a chance on this one. Because it feels real. And maybe that’s exactly the point. You can’t engineer the things that matter. You just have to be present enough to receive them when they arrive.

Maybe the lesson isn’t about giving less. Maybe it’s about giving from the right place. Without agenda. Without fear. Just because something is wrong and you say so.

And when you do — things have a way of returning something you couldn’t have planned.

I’m not used to that yet.

But I think that’s exactly where The Correction is taking me next.

The Correction: Entry 04. More to come.