Months after navigating a period of profound personal loss, J.D., the founder of the personal finance community Get Rich Slowly, has announced a major shift in focus for his life and his work. In a candid update shared with readers, he revealed that he is finally emerging from the emotional fog that followed the death of his mother two months ago, prompting a renewed motivation to pursue productive and intentional living.
After spending weeks engaged in deep soul-searching alongside his partner, Kim, J.D. came to a realization that above all else, he needs to reclaim his personal well-being. The result of this introspection is a deliberate decision to dedicate the coming year—and potentially beyond—to what he is calling the "Year of Me."
2023 — The Year of Me
For J.D., the concept of assigning a theme to a span of time is a familiar practice. More than a decade ago, he regularly themed his years and months, finding both enjoyment and tangible success in the process. Whether he was channeling his energy into fitness, writing, or dating, dedicating focused blocks of time to a single objective consistently yielded positive results. However, as the years progressed, this habit eventually fell by the wayside.
Reflecting on his recent trajectory, J.D. noted that he has spent far too long placing himself second, third, or even ninth in his own priority list. Beginning immediately, his aim is to put himself first.
He acknowledges that this shift feels uncomfortable, admitting that prioritizing his own needs initially feels somewhat selfish and contrary to his usual instincts. For too long, he has allowed external distractions and obligations to interfere with his physical and mental health, frequently relying on excuses to delay self-care. Moving forward, however, he has resolved to make his own well-being the primary objective, operating under the philosophy that taking care of oneself is a necessary precursor to effectively caring for others.
For the loyal readers of Get Rich Slowly, J.D. anticipates that the external experience of the site will remain largely unchanged. The transformation is primarily internal. By granting himself permission to place his own needs and desires ahead of outside demands, he expects to generate fresh perspectives and renewed creative fodder for his writing, while finally bringing long-awaited updates to the website’s design.
At the same time, this personal pivot comes with a deliberate restructuring of his professional output. In alignment with the spirit of the "Year of Me," J.D. is stepping away from rigid publishing schedules and production pressures. Moving forward, he intends to write only when he genuinely has something to say, choosing organic expression over forced content creation. This conversational update, for instance, was written spontaneously after completing an exercise from the book Designing Your Life while waiting for a scheduled call with a friend. While he recognizes that this internal shift is subtle, he considers it an essential step forward.
The Courage to Be Disliked
A significant catalyst for this philosophical re-evaluation occurred during a Thanksgiving road trip to California to visit Kim’s brother and his family. To pass the time during the drive, the couple listened to the audiobook The Courage to Be Disliked by authors Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. The book, which J.D. suggests might be more accurately titled The Courage to Be Happy, explores the psychological framework and worldview developed by pioneering Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler.
The listening experience left a strong impression, introducing J.D. and Kim to a variety of counter-intuitive psychological concepts and profound insights. While many of the book’s core statements initially sounded opaque without context, the couple unpacked the underlying explanations throughout the journey.
J.D. plans to revisit the material in a digital format, intending to skim through the text to extract key highlights. Because the book is structured as a traditional Socratic dialogue between a philosopher and a young student, he finds that selective reading allows him to bypass lengthy conversational tangents while retaining the most valuable philosophical takeaways. He has also hinted that the book may eventually inspire a full review or summary article on Get Rich Slowly.
A Values-Driven Life
The themes of intentionality and personal agency were further reinforced for J.D. by a resurfaced quote from his reading archives via Readwise. The excerpt, originating from Stephen R. Covey’s seminal work The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, struck a particular chord given his current life chapter:
"The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of a proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values."
Reflecting on Covey’s words, J.D. recognized that he had temporarily lost his grip on impulse control while simultaneously drifting away from his core values. To counter this, he has already begun taking concrete steps to curb reactive habits, such as removing distraction-heavy applications like Reddit and Hearthstone from his iPad. The broader objective now is to actively realign his daily actions with carefully chosen and internalized values.
While this introspection marks a departure from traditional, long-form publishing schedules, J.D. reassures his audience that he is not abandoning in-depth content altogether. Instead, readers can expect a more fluid, conversational style of writing for the foreseeable future as he navigates his personal renewal and embraces the tenets of his self-directed year.
