The cursor is a rhythmic, mocking heartbeat in the middle of a blank Google Doc, and I am staring at the 11th email request this season from a well-meaning community leader who wants me to ‘testify.’ My finger hovers over the backspace key, the same way it hovered over the sourdough crust this morning before I realized, with a sudden jolt of nausea, that the underside was blooming with a silent, emerald mold. I had already taken a bite.

People think they want the truth, but they actually want a brochure. As a typeface designer, I spend my life obsessing over the ‘white space’ between letters-the kerning that makes a word legible or a disaster. In my professional world, if you squeeze the ‘r’ and the ‘n’ too close together, they become an ‘m.’ You lose the individual integrity of the characters to create a new, unintentional shape. This is what happens when a religious community tries to ‘kern’ my conversion story. They want to squeeze the messy, jagged parts of my previous life so close to my current ritual practice that the gap disappears, turning my entire existence into a smooth, legible advertisement for their vitality.

Productization of Experience

I am not a success metric. I am not a ‘case study’ for the efficacy of outreach. I am João P.-A., a man who worries about the descenders on a lowercase ‘g’ more than I worry about the theological implications of the afterlife, and yet, I am constantly treated as a walking miracle that needs to be put on a pedestal and poked with a stick of ‘inspirational’ questions. The 1st time I was asked to speak, I felt honored. The 31st time, I felt like a product being moved from the ‘raw materials’ bin to the ‘finished goods’ aisle.

The Violence of ‘Beautiful’ Struggle

There is a specific kind of violence in being told your struggle is ‘beautiful’ by people who didn’t have to live it. They see the 41 months of study, the grueling late-night debates with myself, and the existential vertigo of leaving a familial heritage behind as a charming ‘journey.’ To me, it wasn’t a journey; it was a demolition. You don’t call the controlled implosion of a 21-story building a ‘beautiful transition.’ You call it a mess that requires years of clearing rubble. But the community doesn’t want to hear about the dust in my lungs; they want to hear about the new park they plan to build on the empty lot.

The 1-Degree Lean

Last year, I was working on a project I called ‘Oisín Sans.’ It was a humanist sans-serif, intended to feel organic but precise. I spent 101 hours perfecting the curve of the ‘S.’ I thought I had it. Then, I printed a proof and realized the entire weight of the font was leaning 1 degree to the left. It was imperceptible to the layperson, but to me, it was a fundamental failure of balance. I had to scrap 501 glyphs and start over.

But when I’m asked to write my ‘story’ for the newsletter, they want the version where the font is perfectly upright, printed in gold foil, and sold as a bestseller. They want to hear about the ‘lightbulb moment.’ They want the 1 specific incident where I ‘knew’ I belonged. I tell them there wasn’t one. I tell them it was a slow, agonizing realization that I was simply less miserable in this tradition than I was in the last one. That doesn’t sell tickets to the annual gala.

So, they edit. They take my $171 worth of confusing philosophy books and turn them into ‘a thirst for ancient wisdom.’ They take my 61 days of clinical depression during the transition and turn them into ‘a period of soulful reflection.’ It’s the moldy bread again. They’re serving the moldy bread of my trauma and calling it ‘spiritual sourdough.’

The Boardroom Silence

I remember sitting in a stiff wooden chair during my final interview with the board. There were 31 minutes of silence that felt like hours. I had made a mistake in my preparation-I had forgotten a specific blessing for a specific fruit-and I admitted it. Instead, I saw them smile. They loved the mistake. It made for a better story.

They weren’t looking at me; they were looking at the ‘character’ of the convert they had already written in their heads. I was just an actor who had finally learned his lines, even the ones I flubbed on purpose to seem authentic.

We live in an era where ‘vulnerability’ is a currency. If you aren’t sharing your ‘authentic journey’ on social media, you’re invisible. But there is a massive difference between being vulnerable and being exploited. When a community uses a convert’s story to prove its own worth, it’s a form of spiritual theft. They are taking the most private, fragile parts of a human’s internal restructuring and using it as a PR asset. It makes me want to go back to my studio and design a typeface that is entirely unreadable-just sharp angles and impossible ligatures-something that can’t be flattened into an anecdote.

The Value of Invisibility

I find myself gravitating toward spaces that don’t ask for my ‘story’ as a price of admission. There is a profound relief in being a student rather than a symbol. This is why I appreciate the approach of

studyjudaism.net, where the focus remains on the mechanics of the tradition and the intellectual rigor of the texts, rather than the emotional performance of the practitioner. It’s the difference between a masterclass in typography and a reality show about people who like fonts. One respects the craft; the other respects the drama.

I once spent 21 days trying to fix the kerning between a capital ‘V’ and a capital ‘A.’ It’s the hardest pair to get right because of the diagonal slopes. If you get it wrong, there’s a giant hole in the word. If you get it right, the eye doesn’t even notice. The best design is invisible. I think the best spiritual lives are probably invisible, too. They are the quiet ‘V-A’ combinations of the world-balanced, functional, and not shouting for attention. But the ‘inspiration porn’ industry hates invisible design. It wants neon signs. It wants the ‘V’ and the ‘A’ to be flashing in 51 different colors.

I’m tired of the neon. I’m tired of being asked to be a ‘bridge.’ Bridges get walked on. I want to be a person who happens to have changed his mind about the universe, not a ‘Convert (TM)’ who is perpetually 1 step away from being a testimonial. I’ve started lying to people. When they ask why I converted, I tell them I did it for the hats, or because I lost a bet in a 101-point card game. I give them something so ridiculous they can’t use it for their newsletter. It’s my way of protecting the 1 small spark of actual faith I have left-the part that hasn’t been polished for a crowd.

The Icon vs. The Human

There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with being a public success story for a private decision. You become an icon, and icons don’t get to have bad days. Icons don’t get to look at the ritual and think, ‘This is actually quite boring today.’ But I am not an icon. I am a guy who makes 11 mistakes before breakfast and spends too much money on pens. I am a work in progress with terrible ‘line spacing’ and a few ‘ink blots’ on my character.

If you want to support people on this path, stop asking them to tell you how they got there. Instead, ask them what they’re working on now. Ask me about the 1501-word essay I’m reading on medieval law, or why I think the serif on a 1921 Italian poster is the pinnacle of human achievement. Treat me like a peer, not a pedigree. The moment you ask me to ‘inspire’ you, you’ve stopped seeing me as a human and started seeing me as a tool for your own comfort. And I refuse to be anyone’s tool.

Keep The Mold.

I think back to that bite of moldy bread. The mistake wasn’t the bread itself; it was my assumption that because the top looked perfect, the whole loaf was safe. The community makes the same mistake. They look at the ‘perfect’ convert on the podium and assume the whole process was clean. It wasn’t. It was messy, it was damp, and it had parts that would make you sick if you actually tasted them.

My story isn’t for your inspiration; it’s for my survival. And that is more than enough.