The Marvels of March

Reach out and the door opens (letter 309)

Hello fellow learn-it-all 👋 Greetings from a cozy city in the Netherlands called Amsterdam. We’re twelve days into April so there’s no time like the present to rewind your mind back to March for the duration of this letter. Now, let’s dive into letter 309 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

❓Question to think about

What the heck happened in March?

🖊️Writing

Dear March,

Did we really do all of that?

You were a marvel, and also, a little mad. The kind of month where you look back and genuinely can’t believe it all fit inside 31 days.

You remind me of Novelty November in Chiang Rai, 17 months ago: a new job, a new home, new weekend rituals. Except this time the elephants have been replaced by Amsterdam canals and blossoming trees I don’t yet know the names of.

What happened

I started the month on a beach in Florida with my sister Steph. No agenda, no performance, just the two gals decompressing like we did five years ago in Florida. We walked 10K steps, watched Wuthering Heights, and I ugly-cried watching the snippet of Mister Bean (our hero) make his sandwich on a park bench with sardines.

A New Job

On March 4th I started at Forte Labs as the Customer Success and Community Manager. In the day to day, I communicate with curious learners and set them uo for success. I am grateful to be in this sliver of the Internet, especially after follow the founder, Tiago Forte, back in 2019 when I took his live course to start organizing my notes for my first book better. Back in 2022, I was rejected from a similar role. I wrote about it in my 2022 annual review. That rejection lived with me. This time, I got in. (This video cover letter helped.)

A New Mickey Singer Mindset

From South Florida I drove north to Alachua to meet the author and spiritual leader Michael Singer. It was the longest I’d meditated in a while. community and environment does wonders to my practive. A Cava brunch with inspiring people, conversations that made me feel less alone in the universe. Some of the words he spoke that are sticking with me are:

• Mantras:

  • “I can handle this.”

  • “Brush yourself off and boogie on”

• I cannot control other people’s behavior, so I must learn to let go and be okay anyways.

• The past will never change, and if I want to be free, then I need to start with being okay with the past.

• A human life is significantly insignificant, and each person is not really here for that long, only 80 or 90 years inthe history of the universe. So ask yourself “can I be okay with my life?”

• Spiritual is about honoring and respecting reality as it unfolds.

A Renewed Practice of Connection

On March 24th, I attended an anti-networking event in Miami led by Carly Valancy and Sublime. This was a reminder that the best connections don’t come from working a room or asking “what do you do?”.

Then: Amsterdam.

I reached out, and the door finally opened.

On March 29, I moved to Oost (east Amsterdam), got two new roommates, and signed a housing contract longer than one month. This is the longest contract I’ve signed since the one I signed while living in Chicago in the summer of 2019. Reaching out is what made this happen.

I landed this housing opportunity after over 55 rejections from creating this video to stand out against the flurry of messages also competing for housing in the shortage in the Netherlands.

My 2026 Q1 Reflection

Q1 asked me to be uncomfortable in a specific way: to ask for things. Housing. Opportunities. Connection. It felt needy. But needing things turned out to be clarifying, and it made my mission obvious. Six months of rejections, and here I am: a new job, a new city, a new home. I willed my way into this. And now, for the first time in a long time, I get to just... arrive and settle and see what unfolds from here.

What I published this month

• Finds from February

• How The Little Mermaid wired me

• Snippets from my Wanderful Chapter

• On six years of weekly publishing online

• Making it to Amsterdam

• My audiobook to early buyers with this little video

What I’m learning

Currently active:

• Carly Valancy’s mastermind called Reach Out Party which is like a group hug wtih cheerleader chats that gives me the nudges to send scary emails to people we admire whose orbits we want to be in. And also to feel brave about sharing let downs of rejections.

• Danny Miranda’s Divine Moments course (and the meditations recordings I have to catch up on)

Up next:

• Tiago Forté’s AI Second Brain live cohort course.

• in-person Dutch language classes at Taal School in the Pijp

My March Watchlist (and some notes)

• Ex Machina

  • Really made me wonder about how robots with consciousness probably don’t have humanity’s best interests at heart with their intelligence.

• Wuthering Heights

• Project Hail Mary

  • The best movie I’ve watched this year. Rocky and Grace friendship are goals. I also just have a big crush on Ryan Gosling after my first taste of virality as a young adult was when I saw him in Starbucks on a week day in 2013 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan ad tweeted about and made the local news.

• Her

  • “I think anybody who falls in love is a freak. It’s a crazy thing to do. It’s kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.” — from the main character’s best non-OS human friend Amy, played by Amy Adams

  • Theodore’s girlfriend operating system curates his letters and gets it publihsed under the title "letters from your life" meanwhile I published a book of "letters to my life". I feel less original now, but I didn’t have an OS curate mine.

• Mulan

• The Little Mermaid which inspired my writing of:

  What Wired You?

• Spy Kids 3D:Game-Over (for being a 2003 movie the special effects are surprisingly good)

• The Chronicles of Narnia (surprised myself that I still have it memorized)

• Dr. No (James Bond first movie in 1962)

• From Russia with Love (1963)

• My Old Ass (I love how this movie make me think more about how my present and future self would converese between each other.)

The mantra I’m carrying into April

“Brush yourself off and boogie on.” — Michael Singer

📖Reading

The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer

I listened to the first part of this book on audio before arriving to Florida and then finished the second half of while driving five hours across Florida to hear from the author speak (and sing) his philosophies himself.

This book shares that journey with you so that you can experience what happened when someone dared to let go and trust the flow of life.
Let it be claer from teh start, however, that this type of surrender does not mean livign life wihtou the assertion of will. My story of these forty years is simply the story of what happened when the assertion of will was guided by whatt life was doing instead of what I wanted it to be doing. (6)

And here’s a picture of me and the author Mickey Singer with his new release of a book that I bought and still am chipping away at reading, though I’ve started rereading the Surrender Experiment

🌟Quote to inspire

“The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.”

— Naval Ravikant, investor and philosopher

📸Photos of the Month

🙏Shoutouts

• to my cousin Matthew and the deep talks we shared as roommates, the yoga sessions, the movie nights. Fun times I’m fond of!

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I am grateful you chose to fill part of your day here.

If something in this letter resonated, press the ❤️ , leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetJL@gmail.com. I love hearing from you.

Keep on learning 😁

Tot snel 🌺 🌺

Toodles :)

Jen

P.S. #1 - Still sitting on that draft? I coach writers through the resistance and all the way to publish. Let’s talk.

P.S. #2 - I wrote a book. Letters to My Life is my favorite way to share my writing with you (and it keeps your screen-time stats down). Grab your copy here.