Unrealized Purpose Is Your Eulogy

What Happens When Your Substack Name Becomes a Warning

A couple days ago I was scrolling LinkedIn and came across this post.

I sat with it for a second. And then I decided to try something similar, but instead of asking about building a personal brand, I made it personal. I opened up Claude and typed this:

Tell me something that will destroy me so much that it will make me start pursuing my goals and lay all distractions to the side.

The response came back exactly how I expected it to, at first. It told me I wasn’t lazy. That I was comfortable. That every day I don’t move toward what I want is still a choice, just not the one I’d want to own. True stuff. Hard stuff. The kind of thing you already know but need someone to say out loud.

But then, at the end, it gave me two sentences I wasn’t ready for.

Unrealized Purpose isn’t just your newsletter name. It’s the eulogy you’re writing for yourself every day you don’t show up.

I had to set my phone down.

Unrealized Purpose is my project. My outlet. The place I put the lessons I’m still learning and the observations I’m still making. I’m not an expert writing from the top of a mountain. I’m someone figuring it out and choosing to write it down. That’s always been the point.

But sitting at my desk that afternoon, I realized the name I chose for this publication had been quietly judging me. And it had a point.

I’ve been having a lot of internal conversations lately about what I want my life to actually look like. I’m 25, about to turn 26. Lord willing, there are fifty plus years ahead of me. But that’s not guaranteed, and I’ve started treating it less like a runway and more like a question I have to answer now.

What do I want out of this life?

Work has been consuming a lot of time and energy. I’ve been growing there. Learning. Trying to be genuinely valuable. That matters to me. But in the middle of all of it, I started wondering if maybe I should scale back on this project. Redirect that energy. Focus.

And then I heard this interview. The owner of the Miami Dolphins, was asked what gets him out of bed every morning. What drives him.

He said: impact.

Not wealth. Not legacy in the traditional sense. Impact.

And something in me exhaled. Because that’s it. That’s the thing I keep circling back to no matter how many times I try to talk myself out of it. At my core, what I want is to leave something behind that meant something. Writing that helped someone. A life my family looks back on and says he showed up for us. Work that did more than fill a bank account.

I don’t think chasing money for the sake of money gets you there. Not because money is wrong, but because it’s incomplete. If I get to the end of my life rich and my relationships are hollow, what did I actually build? Who did that serve?

Money isn’t the destination. It’s the fuel.

If you want impact beyond your immediate circle, you need resources. You need reach. You need the ability to do more than goodwill allows. The pursuit of money isn’t the problem. The problem is when money becomes the point instead of the vehicle.

Impact first. Money follows impact. And with more money, more impact becomes possible. That’s the equation I’m working with now.

I’m not walking away from this project or slowing down.

If anything, I’m doubling down. At my job and here. Because both things matter, and the version of me that abandons what he believes in to stay comfortable is not someone I want to become.

The AI was right. Every day I don’t show up to this, I’m writing a different kind of story. And I’ve seen enough of life to know that the story you don’t write doesn’t just disappear. It becomes the thing you regret.

I don’t want that.

So I keep going. Not because it’s easy. Not because I have it figured out. But because unrealized purpose is not the headline I want on my life.