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- the math that almost breaks you
There's a kind of math that people in funeral service do quietly.
It goes like this: if I stay, I know what the paycheck looks like. I know what the benefits look like. I know what the next twenty years look like. The math works.
But the other math. The math about what it costs you to keep showing up to rooms full of grief without anywhere to put yours. The math about what your kids see when you come home from a 3 AM call and can't talk for two days. The math about what happens to your body when you carry other people's worst days and never set them down.
That math doesn't work.
I think a lot of people reading this are doing the same calculation right now. Not about funeral service necessarily. About whatever version of your life makes financial sense but breaks something else. The job you keep because the alternative is uncertain. The relationship you stay in because leaving sounds harder than staying. The identity you hold onto because you built your whole life around it.
You don't owe anybody an explanation for choosing differently.
I still work in funeral service. I didn't leave. But I also built something else alongside it. The music. The community. The Tuesday night livestreams where people show up and say the things they can't say anywhere else.
The Mortals exists because I needed a room that wasn't the arrangement room. A place where grief could be more than professional. Where showing up didn't mean wearing the suit and saying the right thing.
If you've been doing the math and it's not adding up, you don't have to blow your life up. You just have to build a room where the other version of you gets to exist.
That's what The Mortals is.
This is my last hard push for a while. After this email, I won't ask again until July. If The Mortals isn't your room, that's okay. If it is, now is the time.
P.S. "Just Me, Just You" has been out for a week and a half now. The response has been unreal. If you haven't heard it yet: https://laylo.com/nathanmorris/VWYZ2m