Repose / James Bailey

Greetings ladies and gentlemen (the term is to be applied expansively)

Welcome to Serendipity.

If you are reading this for the first time, the loose premise of these musings can be found in the provenance email from September 2023, which, if you don't have time to read, can be summarized as an award-identifying, Pulitzer-adjacent story thingymebobby which has been called nothing short of bang average.

In short, it's a newsletter that reminds the world there are real people in it with real stories that are not Instagram-worthy.

Writing for fun is often the hardest kind of writing to do. When I sit and write, it brings me joy. I smile and occasionally giggle thinking about the stories I should share, mostly because I get to make them significantly more interesting than the real-life experiences I am drawing from.

I get to sound smart, brave and occasionally funny, which, if you have ever spent ten minutes with me, you will know is unlikely to feature prominently in my AI-generated obituary.

For example, recently I went on a journey of unforgiving magnitude to Costco.

I went in search of family sustenance, but somewhere around the dairy aisle I found meaning.

The cheese wheel weighed 42 lbs.

After declining new phone service with AT&T, explaining that I was not contemplating a new air conditioner, or even spiritually open to trying liquid turmeric, I checked out with an oversized cart full of "oh, that's a great deal."

Navigating the final line to be examined drew the last morsels of energy I could muster. When the guy in shorts and compression socks started counting the items in my cart, I knew there was absolutely no chance he could verify everything with any degree of accuracy before the people behind me melted me with their impatient glares. I briefly considered confessing to something just to speed things along.

By the grace of God, he abandoned the count, drew a smiley face on my receipt and I left a free man.

The beautiful cooler bags for new members had been assembled near the exit, which made me think they would be better placed near the entrance. That's a more likely place of potential member coagulation - not the exit - but then I remembered Costco is a god and knows more than I.

On the ride home, I listened to my Johnny Hates Jazz tape through the last remaining functioning speaker in my tortured 2004 Chevy Tahoe.

I speculated that it was unlikely another single person on Interstate 10 was doing the same.

That's when I knew I had just completed a journey I would remember for the rest of my life.

Until I go to Costco next week.

If you have ever wondered how to keep Costco leaf bags open while filling them, this is not the way.

Moving on.

This month's serendipitous moment belongs to May '25's feature Joel Shapiro and July '26's feature Matt Mizenko, who recently scheduled a call to discuss important business matters completely unrelated to the fact that they have both appeared in this prestigious publication.

Obviously, I am taking full credit.

I am also pleased to report that this represents another small but meaningful step toward thawing the emergingly frosty relationship between the United States and Canada.

Neither man currently knows I am monitoring their relationship this closely.

They do now.

Moving on, on.

This month I would like to introduce my cherished and distinguished readers to someone who truly inspires me to be a better human, father, and writer, while simultaneously reminding me that he is a real writer with profound words and ideas that make mine look juvenile and irreverent.

Meet James Bailey.

James Bailey

If you look up James, you will see that he is a numbers, wealth, and markets guy.

But that is a complete ruse. He is a philosopher, writer, and poet. Somewhere along the way, he just figured out how to pay the rent on time.

Fact-check me, but I believe he hails from Seattle and has been stuck in Boise for more than 20 years. For the last few years, he has been building his firm, which recently celebrated a billion milestones or a big dollar under management.

I might have that backwards.

But what makes James special is the way he observes and explains money and meaning.

I could try to explain what I mean, but James does a better job:

"Karen told me that by receiving her gifts of patience and understanding, I would give to her by accepting them. She went on to say that if I fully received her gifts, they would become part of me and that I, in turn, would give them away to others as if they were my own, just as the Sea of Galilee gives away what it receives from the River Jordan, into the roots of plants, into the gills of fish."

See. Real writer.

Bastard.

He also still uses a pen and paper to write, which I believe means you have to be pretty good at spelling and cursive.

I implore you to explore his work here:

If you want to pre-order a signed copy of his upcoming novel, Venmo me $50 here and I will get you on the list.

Or, if you want to DM him about how to build relationships because you are a finance weenie and struggle to make people like you, go here:

As always, thank you so much for reading this newsletter.

Thank you to the robots summarizing it for people who think they are busy, and thank you for not reporting this as spam despite its dubious appearance.

By clicking on this email and reading all the way down to this line, I know we will be friends forever.

Until you unsubscribe.

See you next month.