Chapter Thirteen - The JJ Effect: Phase Two

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The JJ Effect: Phase Two

SO YEAH. NORTH Carolina.

Whole thing’s already a book. Two actually.
I don’t need to rehash it here. You’ve got the play-by-play already.

All you really need to know is:
The sales job didn’t work out.
(Shocking, I know.)

I was there for a week.
It rained.
We weren’t allowed to go get rain gear because “optics,” I guess.
I dipped.

Me and Caleb packed it in and headed home. And for the first time in this whole arc?

I felt no shame.

At first, I was ready to lawyer up.
Rage mode.
Class action? You bet.
Exposé? Already drafting it.

But then I remembered something:

“Even if I won, I’d still be pissed. So why not just… not be pissed?”

So I let it go.

I moved back in with my dad.
My room had been overrun with boxes, junk, and storage overflow.
Naturally, I pimped it back out.

Restored my little universe.
Cleaned. Organized. Lit candles. Moved furniture.
Reclaimed my space.

But I had no momentum anymore.

And no job.
And no plan.
And no “next big thing.”

So I did what I always do when the world breaks down:
I sat down and asked myself: What did I learn?

And then I remembered the plan.
The plan.
The one I wrote on the cruise.
The one that kept poking me in the back of the brain like,
“Hey. Hey. Write the thing.”

So I did.

I sat down. No outline, no prep, no caffeine.

And 36 hours later, Book One was born:
“The JJ Effect: How I Broke Reality.”

I dropped it on April 11.
Told nobody.

But it was real.
It was out there.
Proof that I could synthesize all of it. Not just the chaos, but the clarity.

So then I did the most logical thing you can do after writing a universe-bending spiritual manifesto:

I got a job at Domino’s delivering ‘zas.

My boy Cheddar, yeah, the one with the wine bottles in my car, he hooked me up.
We were talking one day about work and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll deliver pizzas. Why not?”

Meanwhile, my grandparents paid me to landscape their yard.
And then paid me again to clean out their garage.
(Still working on that one.)
(Update: Took me 5 months in between writing books and delivering za’s. They had a LOT of shit in there)

So I was coasting.

Money wasn’t flowing, but it was trickling.
And most importantly, I had time to think.

This was when I learned one of the most freeing truths of adulthood:

“You can be late. And the world keeps spinning.”

I missed a car payment.
Nobody showed up to assassinate me.
Turns out all those childhood fears, the ones drilled into us about bills and debt and instant consequences?

They’re mostly smoke.

They want you to believe you’ll implode if you don’t obey immediately.
But what you’ll actually do… is figure it out.

So I started writing again.

Not books this time, essays.
One-offs. Deep dives. Cosmic rants.

First one was a U.S. history rewrite.
Then another.
And another.

Eventually, I linked them all into a follow-up:

“The JJ Effect: How You Can 2”
(Yes, the number. Because of course.)

Ten essays.
Ten dimensions.
Ten cracks in the illusion.

Then I watched Crazy Stupid Love and realized:
I needed to tell a love story.

So I wrote Love, Remembered.

Then I got mad again about the sales company and wrote The High Road.

Then I had a soft day where I bought Diet Coke and candy for my mom, got a cart, remembered tectonic plates existed, and wrote:

“This Will Make an Atheist Sh*t Their Pants”

Yeah. That happened.

Same day?
I went to a Dayton Dragons game with my family and wrote:

“This Will Make Gamers Sh*t Their Pants.”

Then came:

This Will Make a Film Buff Shit Their Pants (movie mode recap, bangers)
What Would Stoney Do? (Scooby-Doo analysis meets spiritual philosophy)
This Will Make a Foodie Cry (fast food memoir for some reason. Kinda nice.)
Unsinkable: A Time Traveler’s Love Story (lowkey a good concept, kinda hits)
Pip the Pebble and the Mountain of Change (a kids’ book)
A Totally Normal Day (mall fever dream story, actually pretty entertaining)
Trust Fall Theory (about how trust makes or breaks everything)

And just like that the floodgates were open.
I couldn’t stop.

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention.

Right after the Evelin fallout, I took shrooms.

Flashback moment, baby.

Right when I needed it most, when my sense of identity was shattered and vulnerable…
I nuked my ego with psilocybin.

Not recreational.
Not for fun.

I rewired my operating system.

And that’s when the veil cracked.
That’s when I started seeing.

Call it what you want.

Spiritual awakening.
Pattern recognition.
Delirium.
Superpower.
Alignment.

But after that, I quit every vice I had.

No nicotine.
No sugar.
No diet pop.
No fake tea with “natural flavors.”
Just water. (Yes, with microplastics. But now I know.)

And somehow, with all this… clarity, I realized:

This is what the JJ Effect really is.

It’s not a product.
It’s not a brand.
It’s not a scam.

It’s an unraveling.

Of trauma.
Of illusion.
Of identity.

And when you unravel it just right?
You realize you don’t need to become a superhero.
You just need to become you. Without the fear, without the noise, without the chains.

Oh, and also… it’s about quantum mechanics or something. Don’t ask how, please. I couldn’t tell you.

Ta-da.