The Gift of Embracing Your Weird
A few years ago at Burning Man, I found myself out in the deep playa, laughing with friends over some marinated steak strips we’d brought with us. We were out there eating beef, deep in the desert, so naturally we dubbed it Deep Beef. It started as an inside joke—one of those things that only makes sense when you’re covered in dust and basking in the shared absurdity of being alive.
But like all good weird things, it came back around.
Years later, I was returning to the Burn and found myself wanting to give something back. Gifting is one of the central tenets of Burning Man. People offer up cold brew, massages, chapstick, glitter, grilled cheese. But I’ve always been more of an experience person. So I started asking: What would it look like to give an experience that only I could offer?
That’s when the memory of Deep Beef came back. And I thought—what if Deep Beef wasn’t just about steak? What if it was an invitation to go deep with people? What if I set up a station in the quiet part of the playa, turned on a neon sign that said “DEEP BEEF,” and told people there was only one rule:
To receive beef, you must first release your beef.
Meaning: in order to get a beef jerky stick, you had to release something you were holding onto—an old grudge, some frustration, a piece of pain or resentment. Once you let go of your “beef,” you got a stick of beef in return. Deep meets dumb. Sincerity meets satire. Soul meets snack.
My wife, Katherine, and I built the whole thing by hand. We hot-glued our own neon sign. We bought a battery pack, a folding table, and a camping chair. We laughed through the process. I then hauled everything on a bike across the desert—looking like a circus clown about to tip over into the sand.
And then one night, I made my way out into the dark, quiet part of the playa. I set everything up. I sat down in my chair, alone with my bag of jerky, and had that very real moment: Is this the dumbest thing I’ve ever done? Is anyone even going to come?
But I had made it all the way there. So I flipped the switch.
The neon sign came to life.
And then… people started coming.
The first visitors were curious, willing. It’s Burning Man—people are generally game. But even still, I watched them wrestle for a moment with the question: What do I want to release?
Then a mother and son sat down. The mom said, “I want to release this feeling that I’m always the bad one in the family.” Her son looked at her, took it in, and said he wanted to release seeing her that way. We hugged it out. Then I handed them their beef sticks. And we cracked up.
Then came a couple, feeling guilty about leaving their cat at home. They talked about how much they loved her. Everyone gathered around and asked, Tell us more about your cat. We all howled into the sky together and laughed and let it go.
Then came a woman wanting to release body shame. Another person overwhelmed by the state of the world. One after another, strangers sat with me, shared their griefs and grudges, and left lighter. Sometimes we cried. Sometimes we screamed. Sometimes we laughed till we couldn’t breathe.
All I had done was show up with a chair, a sign, some beef sticks, and an idea. But it was enough. Because sometimes, all people need is an invitation. A little nudge to release something, to open up, to be silly, to be sincere.
And this is the magic of embracing your weird.
It’s easy to shut down those odd little ideas when they first arrive—the ones that make you pause and say, That would be funny… but no, that’s ridiculous. We’re taught to suppress the weird, to color inside the lines, to keep our absurdity hidden in the notes app. But what if your weird is your most sacred form of expression? What if your weird is a gift?
I think about artists like Bo Burnham or Jack Black or Weird Al Yankovic—people who took the bizarre and the absurd and followed it through. At some point, those ideas must have seemed just too strange to share. And yet here we are, still singing along.
The truth is, weirdness is often just creativity in its purest form—before it’s sanded down for public consumption.
It’s raw, unfiltered, a little uncomfortable. It makes people squint at first. But it’s also what makes people feel. And connect. And laugh. And remember.
Since the Burn, I keep wondering: What if I brought Deep Beef into the real world?
Like… what if I just set it up in a park downtown? What if I put the sign up and sat there with beef sticks and invited people to release their beef? What if people actually came over? What if someone released something real and found a little freedom in the process?
And what if they didn’t?
What if the only outcome was me showing up in public with my weird idea and finding joy in having followed it through?
That, too, would be enough.
Because the real reward isn’t just in how others receive your weird—it’s in what it feels like to live it. To show up for the strange spark inside you. To build the sign. To bike through the dust. To howl under the stars. To sit in a chair with your heart open and your beef sticks ready.
So if you’re sitting on a weird little idea, let this be your invitation:
Flip the switch. Turn on the sign. See what happens.
You never know what magic might follow.
