Now, before you clutch your pearls, hear me out: if you want to do great work, there are two deadly gaps waiting to swallow your ambitions.

First up is Ira Glass' taste gap. As Glass puts it, "People begin creative work because they have killer taste. But most people quit before their taste matches their skills."

It's having champagne dreams on a beer budget.

Then there's Mac Demarco's "hold my beer" gap.

If you missed 2014's Mac Demarco, picture a jazz-level guitar hero playing lo-fi chords that sound like they were plucked from an alien crystal cave.

All while surfing a crowd who's spanking his naked butt.

Demarco makes it look so effortless that you can't help but think, "Hold my beer, I can do that." It's the same impulse that makes soccer dads at Picasso exhibitions mutter, "My kid could draw that."

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Spoiler alert: they can't.

It's easy to dismiss Demarco as your goofy stoner cousin at the family dinner, the one who rants about government-hidden aliens but can also break down the physics of light-speed travel and the Fermi Paradox if you pass the vibe check.

His genius lies in the ability to make the complex look easy and the profound seem playful.

I'd love to say that Mac acknowledged my spanking with a nod and a wink, but the man was busy bridging the the skill-simplicity gap that separates the merely good from the truly great.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matías.

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I met Daniel as a co-worker in Beijing back in 2015. A tattoo-covered, music-teaching fellow nerd with killer trombone skills.

We clicked immediately.

One day - in the early days of our friendship - Dan bursts into my classroom clutching a shoebox-sized package and said:

"Mate, they're here!".

Un-fun fact about me: I despise 99% of fruits. I only eat green apples and bananas. I'll nibble a watermelon slice out of politeness, but that's my limit.

When I was 7, my pediatrician offered me cold, hard cash to try a peach.

I declined.

So Daniel opens the box with a loud "TA-DAAA" and... figs.

Thirty-six of them. Fat, ripe, and fragrant.

Did you know that a wasp has to die inside each fig for it to pollinate? Yum.

I faked excitement. I wanted Dan to like me, so off we went to my place and cooked not one or two, but FIVE fig-based dishes.

It pains me to admit it, but they were pretty good.

To me, eating fruits is one of those acquired tastes that makes me feel part of a club I've always longed for: people who eat peaches & cream, drink melon & wine, have strawberries & sex.

It's alluring, like a secret society I can't quite infiltrate.

Maybe I come from a tribe that had a strict mushroom diet. Or they were scared of fruits because of an early death involving a poisoned berry. Or even worse: choked by an oversized raisin.

As I chewed through Dan's fig feast, I wondered: was I finally joining the fruit-lovers' club, or just getting better at faking it? Either way, it was a small price to pay for friendship – even if it meant swallowing a wasp.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matías.

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When dictatorships plagued Latin America, Quino kept publishing Mafalda books with the meaning of democracy. 

It wasn’t Quino telling Videla to fuck off.

It was Mafalda telling Videla to fuck off.

The power of an alter ego is colossal. Take MF DOOM, a rapper who rhymed as a villain when every other MC wanted to be the hero.

He created a character and spun tales from the perspective of a supervillain. Then, producing another alter ego, King Geedorah, he offered the viewpoint of an alien visiting Earth.

Now picture King Geedorah observing Mafalda lecturing a dictator about democracy and a rapper roasting the music industry behind a metal mask. He'd probably think to himself:

"Hmm, maybe pissing off humans wasn't such a great idea after all."

An alias provides freedom at the expense of celebrity status. For the Jake Pauls of the world, that's unthinkable. For the Banksys, it's a necessity.

If I had to choose an alter ego, it'd be a hideous and reclusive writing goblin named Barfaduk. Setting the bar so low that people would be pleasantly surprised when they meet me in person.

"Oh, you're actually quite nice, sir. Drinks on me!"

There's this notion that the best art makes you uncomfortable to share. The kind that's a little too close to the bone. We attach value to others' vulnerable bits of work because they're relatable.

But what happens when you put on a mask or channel your ideas through a 6-year-old girl? Does it dilute authenticity? Is it an armor that will alienate people?

Perhaps those are questions for Barfaduk and King Geedorah— students of the human race.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matías.

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Meanwhile, Hollywood superstar Hedy Lamarr was dealing with her own communication breakdown – an oppressive arms-dealer husband.

They split, but at least her marriage gave her insights into military tech.

Here's where it gets juicy: Hedy was a polymath, a rare breed outstandingly good in multiple fields. Think Da Vinci but with better hair.

Hedy would dash to her trailer between takes to obsess over the military's radio jamming puzzle. She teamed up with composer George Antheil and, inspired by player pianos, they birthed frequency hopping technology.

This solution changed communications forever. It laid the groundwork for modern wireless tech like WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth.

Hedy patented the invention in 1942, but the Navy shelved it, claiming it was "too bulky" for a torpedo. She realized her pitch had misfired – mentioning pianos made officials imagine cramming a Steinway into a submarine.

Hedy's talent for connecting dots across disciplines produced unique outcomes in cinema and technology. But the world wasn't ready to tune into her frequency.

She didn't receive financial compensation for her patent, and her work gained recognition much later. In 1997, she received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award.

Her answer over the phone – as the pioneer and visionary that she was – consisted of a quote from Lizzo:

"It's about damn time."

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matías.

If you want to become a better short-form storyteller, sign up to my free newsletter at www.atomicstories.net ✏️❤️⚡️

See you on the next one! ❤️

Matias.

I wonder if Ingvar Kamprad knew the effect his furniture had on people.

Not just the relationship body count, but the shift in value perception.

Scientists coined "The IKEA Effect" to describe how labor alone can jack up a person's valuation of a product.

It's like that man you share a roof with: kinda broken, occasionally drunk, and a tad defensive. But priceless.

Why? Because you've sunk so much goddamn work into that human that your labor-love goggles only see a Greek God in Crocs, wielding an electric drill dangerously close to his flabby bits.

Even when he sees your competence with the IKEA manual as a direct assault on his manliness, the perceived value of that walking dumpster fire goes up like NVIDIA stock.

You patiently wait as he screws the bookshelf base backward, pretending it's all part of some grand plan. And, somehow, your affection grows.

Ingvar Kamprad, were you playing some kind of 4D social chess?

Or was this just a happy accident that lives in every wonky bookshelf and every relationship that survived its assembly?

You didn't just sell furniture; you sold a twisted form of couples therapy with an Allen key and extra screws included.

Well played.

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See you on the next one! ❤️

Matias.

Ew. No. But…

I thought Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" was fantastic.

Go ahead. Release the Kraken of your judgment.

I'm ready.

Just kidding. Please don't. I’m fragile.

That's why I only read "cool" books in public.

The Pynchons, the Carvers, and the Bolaños.

Now, if you see me in public holding an e-reader just a few inches from my nose, I'm almost certainly wolfing down some cringey non-fiction-guide-to-how-to-do-it-better-make-it-faster-make-us-stronger-certified-bro-science classic.

This literary split personality is a byproduct of loving "The Alchemist," and then discovering it wasn't cool to admit it.

Coelho gets flak for his self-helpy vibes, but to his credit – he made me finish a book in 7th grade after years of cheating my way through reading comprehension tests.

That eye-rolling factory of a book reignited my love for reading just in time.

So, if you haven't read it, give it a shot.  Maybe it'll do the trick for you.

Just don't tell the Pynchon fans I sent you.

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See you on the next one! ❤️

Matias.

I'm prone to decision fatigue, and mind you, I'm no Warren Buffet. These are "tofu or tempeh"/"Arial or Helvetica" type-o-decisions.

Low-stake stuff that piles up until I throw my hands up and say, "Fuck it, I guess I'll listen to 'Venus in Furs' for the trillionth time."

Choice overload and decision fatigue are bullies to the brain. But there is hope:

Back in Melbourne, I used to rent from a video shop with a "Staff Picks" rack. The place was likely run by music nerds, because that's how I discovered "The Devil and Daniel Johnston, "The Story of Anvil," and "It Might Get Loud."

Each pick was a sonic window into someone else's taste, a curated exit from the deadly playlist-pallooza.

13 years and 15,589 km later, there's a neighboring music store: "Pet Sounds". The quiet crackle of a record player in the corner will soundtrack this question:

"Hey there, fellow human. Flesh-and-bone algorithm of the arts. What record within this store would you take to a desert island?"

The inner music snob will rise from the ashes, never to touch a playlist again, and say things like

"Actually, that's a pretty unlistenable record."

It will be glorious.

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See you on the next one! ❤️

Matias.

In 2002, Chile faced an unprecedented cultural invasion from Brazil: AXÉ music.

Picture this: I'm 17, having somehow sweet-talked past the bouncer. I step into the club and...

The Horror.

The entire crowd is dancing AXÉ.

Hundreds. In sync.

They know it. I don't.

It made me think I was bad at dancing. Which I wasn't, thanks to The Black Eyed Peas.

AXÉ, TikTok, or "The Harlem Shake" thrived because of two things:

1. Our brains are wired to mirror and learn from others. See someone nail a dance move? Your neurons fire as if you're doing it yourself. It's your brain saying, “Bro, we should try that”

2. Dancing in sync is a shared experience that releases endorphins and boosts social connections. It's tribal bonding.

If I had TikTok back then, I would've locked myself in the bathroom, practiced until my hips got sore, and emerged a changed man. 

I'd have stomped into that club bare-chested, riding a white tiger, ready to blend seamlessly into the AXÉ-crazed crowd.

Instead, I stood there, a rhythmically challenged statue, watching as my peers transformed into Brazilian dancing ambassadors.

At least now I know it wasn't just me – it was my mirror neurons still stuck with Will.i.am.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

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Had he ignored his intuition, you’d still be scrubbing your undies on a washboard.

Kekulé was wrestling with benzene’s molecular structure — the key to modern detergents. Enter the prophetic self-consuming snake and boom! 

Tide pods.

Intuition is your brain’s way of connecting patterns from minimal inputs. You use it all the time:

Sketchy-looking Uber driver?

“Oh, I forgot something!”

** sprints away like Forrest Gump **

Your gut feelings aren’t magic — they’re a highlight reel of your past experiences. And like any skill, you can train it.

Picture intuition as the tin-foil hat dude with a corkboard full of red strings connecting fuzzy polaroids. That’s your brain, frantically joining dots you didn’t even know existed.

Kekulé was so immersed in his research that his brain kept crunching data even when he was drooling on his pillow.

In your case, your tastes, passions, and micro-obsessions are constantly feeding your pattern-hungry mind.

So next time your inner snake whispers, listen up.

It might just spark the next world-changing idea — or at least save you from a questionable Uber ride.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

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Once, I had 2. Lost against both. 🙂‍↕️

Out of respect for their real identities, I'll call them dickie 1 and dickie 2.

The beef with dickie 1 was a violent one: he was the tallest in the class, and I was second, so we had 1 fight every year that would be even-ish.

Until he grew a head taller than me and our yearly “Rocky v/s Apollo” became “Bambi v/s Godzilla. I had to call it quits.

Despite the copious loss of blood and street credibility, having enemies makes you grow.

All races to the top. They fight and everybody wins.

With dickie number 2, it was about grades.

We were head-to-head until the finals, where having a tyrant mother gave him the edge he needed to score a few extra decimals.

He still made me care a little more about my grades and for that, I thank him.

Whether it's anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, or that neighbor that never waves back at you, choose an enemy. It's a helpful evil-guiding star.

Enemies drive conflict and conflict drives change.

And who doesn't want change?

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

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1. "You will travel to many places."

2. "You will receive money from an unexpected source."

3. "Don't fry potatoes while naked."

That was a trick question. I’m sorry. They're all true—especially number 3.

But what do they have in common?

They're open enough for you to fill in the blanks.

The story is already in your head.

If your brain is the Olympic flame, a fortune cookie is Snoop Dogg carrying the torch that'll make it blaze.

Wanna know how to light that fire?

Wonton Foods churns out 4.5 million fortune cookies per day. They pick from a pool of 15,000 fortunes written by professionals.

I'm frankly offended that no one told me "fortune cookie writer" was a viable career path. I've chosen poorly.

In the meantime, I'll have to make do with the next best thing: short-form content. Which, if you squint, looks a hell of a lot like a fortune cookie.

The not-cookie-cutter recipe for a successful content cookie is:

1. Brevity: "You will travel to many places."

2. Personal relevance: "You will receive money from an unexpected source."

3. Relatability and vivid imagery: "Don't fry potatoes while naked."

Storytelling, fortune cookies, and relationships all benefit from the same principle:

Leave room for the other to grow, and you might get lucky and be heard.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

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No fancy tools, no spinning wheel—just my bare hands pressing, pinching, and molding. I made those plates knowing they’d be destroyed.

And I loved it.

Making things for the internet stirs a cocktail of emotions: giddy excitement mixed with paralyzing doubt.

"Will my friends like it?" "Will my boss see it?" "Is this THE ONE to catapult me into the internet stardom I so clearly deserve?"

The Japanese have a term that help me ignore this: Mono no aware.

It refers to "the beauty in things that will not last and the gentle sadness at their passing."

Picture cherry blossom season, a snowflake, or my preemptively doomed clay plates, made to be smashed across some drunk Roman soldier's face in a fight scene.

There's beauty in creating with awareness of life cycles.

Whether it's blockbuster set design, the song of the summer, or the next text you'll fire into the screaming void of the internet—

Zoom out the timeline far enough, and everything becomes Mono no aware—my clay plates, Kiefer Sutherland, the entire city of Pompeii. All of it.

It's a soothing feeling.

Whenever I catch myself staring blankly at the "publish button" I think of a volcano engulfing my work, and off it goes.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

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Your eyes light up, already picturing the mountain of tacos you're about to demolish.

But then I say, "Oops, there's an error. You need to return $30."

You roll your eyes, mutter "dickhead", and reluctantly comply.

Now, in a parallel universe, I give you the same $50, but this time I say, "There's an error, but you get to keep $20."

You're still smiling at your Andrew Jackson, and you invite me to a taco.

Prospect theory suggests that the sting of losing is psychologically about twice as potent as the thrill of gaining.

That's why you're more likely to blow those 20 bucks on travel insurance than to stash them in a savings account.

Don't believe me? Take a stroll through your YouTube feed.

Count how many "Avoid These 3 Mistakes" videos you spot compared to "3 Tips to Improve Your..."

Next time you're faced with a decision, talk to your brain and ask point-blank: Bro, are we chasing a win, or running from a loss?

The answer will determine how good that taco will taste.

See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

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You can make a reader weep with a novel, a short story, or a sentence. 

I choose the latter. Short-form is devastating. 

Two examples: 

Jenny Holzer's "Protect me from what I want" 

and Hemingway's "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

I’m still recovering from those.

In long form, you surrender by submission. 

In short form, it's lights out. Can't undo, can't unsee. You've changed.

Precision beats power.

Those are not my words, but Connor McGregor’s.

How else could Olympic pistol shooters, pro dart players, and curling athletes out-cool their buffer counterparts?

Short-form is the sharpshooter's game. Hit the target with a handful of words, and you're golden.

So yeah, let's make short-form an Olympic sport. Picture it: writers on the podium, still sweaty, medals gleaming.

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See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

"Talking out of turn? That's a paddlin'. 

Lookin' out the window? That's a paddlin'. 

Staring at my sandals? That's a paddlin'. 

Paddlin' the school canoe? Oh, you better believe that's a paddlin'."

That was Jasper Beardsley during Springfield's '95 teacher's strike. But has original writing gone on strike too?

If so, the surge of empty buzzwords is a plague we can beat back together. 

It's 2024, and the paddle is making a comeback.

"Let's dive in." Whack! That's a paddlin'. 

"Delve, unlock, leverage, tapestry" That's a paddlin'. 

"Fire, fam?" Oh, you better believe that's a paddlin'.

"Elevate" damn it. That's a paddlin'.

My paddlin' debt is astronomical. Not because of AI, but because I've been stuck in an echo chamber, reading the same rehashed content on repeat. 

That’s why I've compiled a list of 41 phrases to avoid if you want to make your short-form scripts more precise and less buzzwordy. 

Let's make writing fun to read again – one whack at a time.

The paddle-wackin’ list of no-nos 

Avoid like the plague. Use them only to paraphrase, quote, or mock the term itself. Use your best judgement. 

Here’s Stephen King on his sworn enemies: adverbs.

Replace adverbs for buzzwords

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day...

In the end, my dearest dear. It’s up to you. Here is the list:

Overused buzzwords:

1. Game-changer / game-changing

2. Innovative

3. Cutting-edge

4. State-of-the-art

5. Transformative

6. Revolutionary

7. Groundbreaking

Unnecessary transitions:

8. Let's dive in

9. It's important to note…

10. In today's digital world…

11. Hope this message finds you well

12. Let's explore

13. In this article/guide/blog post…

14. In summary/conclusion…

Vague terms:

15. Tapestry

16. A testament to…

17. Master the art of…

18. Next level

19. Elevate

20. Captivate

21. Leverage

22. Resonate

23. Endeavor

24. Unleash

25. Unlock

Clichés:

26. In the ever-changing world of…

27. Navigate

28. Set sail

29. Begin a journey, start a journey

30. Uncharted

Fillers:

31. Showcase

32. A mixture of, an array of

33. A wealth of, a rich source of

34. Multifaceted

35. Spread through

36. Pervade

Unnecessary Modifiers:

37. Enhance

38. Fine-tune

39. Optimize

Forced slang:

40. Fam

41. Fire

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See you on the next one! 🫶

Matias.

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work”.

Best example? Rick & Morty. 

If you haven’t watched Rick & Morty. No worries, I got you. 

Here is a summary of one of the show’s greatest hits: Pickle Rick

1. Rick, a genius scientist. 

2. To avoid a family therapy session, he transforms himself into a pickle. 

3. But being a pickle with no limbs, he accidentally falls into the sewers.

4. To survive, Rick adapts by constructing an exoskeleton from cockroach and rat parts. 

5. He’s achieved his goal of escaping therapy.

6. But battling through a violent gauntlet of rats, sewer critters, and a secret agency. 

7. Leaving a trail of death and destruction. Rick returns home and turns himself back to human.

8. Rick reluctantly attends therapy, at least willing to listen.

The creator -Dan Harmon- uses the “Harmon Circle” to structure every episode. 

1. You

2. Need

3. Go

4. Search

5. Find

6. Take

7. Return

8. Change

This absurd premise - a scientist-turned-pickle action-packed journey - thrives within the Circle's constraints.

Structures are liberating, structures are life.

Now, off to my 7:20 coffee

See you tomorrow!🫶

Matias

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You’re tired.

You see this as a personal attack.

You take a picture of the olive-reeking greasy “stack” of plates, slap it in a message, write “nice”, and before pressing send…

You remember what you have in your pocket:

A “human prompt to do a little better than usual”.

You read it, delete the message, she comes home, you talk it out, hug, make out a little, and cook tacos with Japanese funk in the background.

Life is good.

Just remember: Role, task description, context, specific requirements, boundaries, reasoning, and examples.

See you tomorrow!

Matias.

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