We may feel we need to escape into the woods to find that wildness. But wildness isn’t a place. It’s a rhythm. And it’s already in you, waiting to be found. It’s the longing that stretches beyond language, the instinct that pulses beneath logic, and the fierceness that refuses to be domesticated. For many Outsiders, wildness was buried early beneath shame, silence, and survival. But it can be reclaimed, and that reclamation is sacred.
From Wildman to Warrior: A Name That Holds a Tension
The Mankind Project (MKP), a men’s organization to which I belong, is known for its initiatory weekend: the New Warrior Training Adventure, commonly called the Warrior Weekend. But it wasn’t always called that.
The way I heard the story, in MKP’s early days, the weekend was called the Wildman Weekend. The name evoked rawness, chaos, and the archetypal masculine energy that defies polite society and cultural expectations of manhood. Eventually—probably to appeal to more men—it was renamed the Warrior Weekend or the NWTA. “Warrior Weekend” may have sounded less threatening. This shift added a sense of structure, accountability, and integration.
The name change fits the point of this newsletter. I’m not sure if the weekend activities changed when the name did, but the renaming itself suggests something. It reflects a deeper tension: how to hold wildness without being consumed by it, and how to build structure without losing the fire.
MKP has managed to thread that needle well. And the name change offers a fitting metaphor for what we’re exploring here.
Apollo Meets Dionysius
Art in all its forms, including living life artfully, demands a little wildness. The quality of creativity is often measured by how much and how well a creation steps away from the status quo. But a good artist also takes the time to learn technique. Structure is necessary, too.
Creativity, then, is an ever-flexible slide along a spectrum between structure and wildness. Apollo working alongside Dionysius, if you’re into mythological archetypes.
Another way to look at it is that creativity lives within a scaffolding that’s sturdy enough to hold what needs holding, yet flexible enough to avoid rigidity. Too much structure, and we become stuck, cutting off the flow of a creative life. Too much wildness, and we lack the discipline needed to build.
When either side falters, creativity is either absent or scattered so haphazardly that it serves no purpose.
Outsiders and the Architecture of Survival
So, what does any of this have to do with Outsiders—men who struggle with chronic PTSD, and the women who care about them and share their journey?
Consider these three homemade archetypes of men who have trouble balancing structure and wildness due to the trauma in their lives.
We’ll call the first a Stone-Keeper. This man builds walls instead of bridges and doorways. He mostly rejects the wild and clings to the safety of structures, consciously or subconsciously maintaining systems designed to keep chaos, imperfection, and criticism at bay. He stays locked away too long inside the emotional fortress he built at a younger time, when he needed it. The instinct to stay safe lingers long after the danger has passed. His structure may be strong, but his wildness is all but missing, often along with creativity. Freezing and dissociating are usually the major functional styles.
Other Outsiders might reject all the structure they can get away with rejecting. Let’s call him a Wind-Stalker—always chasing freedom, never landing solidly anywhere. He likely grew up in a home that lacked stability. Every day was a guessing game; his childhood held only unpredictability. The Wind-Stalker may drift into bohemian excess to avoid the discomfort that often comes with discipline—discipline he no longer trusts. His creativity, when present, is messy and structureless, and he accomplishes little that feels truly satisfying. There is usually little purpose in what he creates. Instead of clinging to structure, he listens for tremors. Fight-or-flight responses with little containment or regulation characterize him.
And a third—the Tide-Walker—is caught between the moon and the shore, pulled in both directions, always roiled and never still. He is drawn to both structure and wildness, but never at the same time or in an integrated way. The young Tide-Walker is often shaped by a caretaker he counted on for protection, but who also inflicted unwarranted criticism, pain, or abuse. He doesn’t know who or what to trust, so trust becomes the issue. He craves stability one moment, then lets it all go and collapses into a kind of counterfeit wildness the next. (True wildness is proactive and requires more commitment to the wild than the Tide-Walker is usually willing to give.) He longs for intimacy, and then sabotages it. He carries a deep desire for many things, but fears each thing just as much as he wants them. Psychologically, he may be loosely compared to the disorganized attachment style if attachment styles were extended beyond relationships into all other parts of life.
What the three share isn’t a lack of talent or desire—it’s a fractured relationship with wildness and structure. Because of that, none of them live creatively. Not in the career sense. I don’t mean being an actor or painter. I mean assembling a life with enough freedom and form to feel both effective and alive.
When Things Begin to Turn: Seeing the Options in the Chaos
On the day I realized I had far more options than I’d ever considered, everything shifted. It happened at the NWTA when I was initiated a year ago this weekend. The realization wasn’t just about possibility—it was an invitation to live creatively. Those options had always been buried in the chaos of my life, scattered fragments representing both wildness and structure. Some were raw and intuitive, others orderly and codified. All I had to do was begin gathering them and arranging them into something meaningful using the different parts, whether wild or orderly.
Wildness offers raw material—emotion, intuition, instinct. Structure offers containment—form, discipline, direction. When I began shaping those scattered options into something purposeful, I wasn’t abandoning wildness or tearing down structure. I was building a space of my own—sturdy enough to hold both, flexible enough to let them breathe.
But there’s nothing “one-and-done” about it. Every day, I have to rediscover the balance. Putting too much weight on accomplishment feels almost like the opposite of wildness. It’s bound to throw things off-kilter. The illusion of completeness sets things in stone in a way that guarantees rigidity. Cling to it too tightly, and it becomes a kind of delusion.
There’s always more to do. Each day is a new effort to find the creative balance: embracing the innate and spontaneous while tweaking the structural architecture that gives it form and meaning. I’d call it a work in progress if I weren’t dodging clichés. But it’s not really progress. It’s something more like an always-fluctuating rhythm.
At the beginning of a job writing for a website, before everyone understood each other, the editor said he expected writers to turn in their rough drafts before moving to the next step. In all the classes I took and taught, the rough draft was always seen as a mess. It was the place where you spilled all the gathered information and half your guts, using only raw imagination with little regard for technique. This was not the stage for heavy editing or precise structure. It was the part of writing where you explore the wild before taming it with form. Anne Lamott even colorfully titled a chapter in her writing book, Bird by Bird, “Shitty First Drafts,” where she described the phenomenon as the rule, not the exception.
So, the first few times, I obediently handed in what I considered a true rough draft—only to receive a demoralizing edit, with corrections descending on the page like confetti. This editor seemed to have a very different idea of what a rough draft was. It seemed he was expecting something more polished. If that was his idea of a rough draft, what exactly was the aforementioned next step? What happened to the old saw, “writing is rewriting,” and the writer’s free-range autonomy, the gift of the rough draft implies?
We all have that editor in our heads who takes out the red pen too soon and mistakes wildness for failure. We need a place where we can safely take all the information and ideas we have and explore them in very free and messy ways. Without that step, creativity isn’t likely to happen. It’s dead on arrival.
Take Stone-Keepers, for example. He’s more likely than the others not to allow himself the luxury of messy and wild experiences before launching into something more structured. Old scripts warn him not to tolerate imperfections, because a rough draft may be followed by painful criticism and abandonment. So, instead of moving forward creatively, he freezes. A quest that requires a messy start is too much for him.
In that respect, most of us have some amount of Stone-Keeper in us. Much more in our lives should begin as wild, shitty rough drafts.
How to Balance Wildness with Structure In Everyday Life
So, let’s leave the wild-heavy spaces of theory and enter a more practical arena. We’ll lean heavily on wildness in these exercises and be a bit lighter on structure—because structure is everywhere. Most modern men are likely overstructured, not “overwild.” So, let’s loosen up the wild and trust the structure to take care of itself.
Some things you might try:
Let the Day Be Your Guide Before you check your list, step outside. Let one thing that is alive or dynamic set your direction. A crow’s call, a shifting shadow, the scent of wet earth. Follow it. Let it lead, and set the tone for the day.
Does that instruction feel too vague? Perfect. Let’s see what wild things you do with it.
Break the Trance Set a timer for a random moment in your day. When it goes off, stop what you’re doing and do something totally unproductive—but raw.
Some trance-breaking suggestions:
Go outside and stand barefoot in the dirt, the snow, or the grass for five minutes. Leave your phone inside. Just feel your feet. That’s the whole assignment.
Pound a pillow with your fists, just for the hell of it.
Write one paragraph about something you’re afraid to admit. Then delete it.
Recline on the floor and breathe. Not meditating. Just breathe. Be more animal than man during this exercise. Recline… breathe… be animal.
Go to your music app and play a song you’ve never heard before. Then move like nobody’s watching. It’s okay to dance, but this isn’t about style or technique. It’s about letting your body move how it wants to—not how it’s supposed to.
Free form.
Stare at your face in the mirror for 60 seconds. No fixing, no adjusting, and definitely no judging. Just witness. See what the mirror sees—uncurated.
Stop the Tug-of-War with Obsession That thing trying to grab your attention? You know the one. It makes staying on task feel like a tug-of-war. When you notice it wanting to compete, let go of your end. No matter how impractical it might be, let it take the stage for twenty minutes. No interruptions. No apologies. Read about it, sketch it, write about it, chase it. Whatever you think this obsession wants—give it that. Don’t try to justify it. For twenty minutes, just follow it.
Wildness shows up when you stop trying to tame it.
And when you’re done, be curious about where this obsession goes next. Does it leave? Does it stay? Does it want more?
You gave your obsession twenty minutes. That was the deal. Now get back to your day.
Practice Letting Go Structure is basically about predictability, safety, and control. Sometimes, wildness involves control—but more often, it’s about unpredictability and surrendering to the moment.
Occasionally, ignore outcome numbers and other metrics, and trust your instincts to tell you that what you’ve done is enough.
Challenge the idea that there’s only one way to do something, and let go of the one way—even if just experimentally.
Notice difficult emotions without trying to control or organize them.
Look for the things you hang on to too tightly, and practice relaxing your grip.
Holding the Tension, Honoring the Dance
We have one more homemade archetype to discuss—one that doesn’t represent imbalance, but the steady rhythm of holding both sides, wildness and structure, lightly. Let’s call this balanced man the Rhythm-Dancer.
The Rhythm-Dancer isn’t a perfected man. He’s not balanced in the way a scale is balanced. He’s attuned. He listens. He moves with the moment and instinct, yet he also holds a quiet respect for skill and order.
Where the Stone-Keeper clings to structure, the Wind-Stalker chases wildness, and the Tide-Walker drowns in the tension between them—the Rhythm-Dancer learns to embrace both. Not always gracefully. Not always consistently. But with enough rhythm to move back to the place where he finds balance when he needs to.
This Outsider is the man who learns to breathe again. To feel timing. To move with it. Not by mastering a more creative way of living, but by dancing more in step with it.
Comment Prompts
Which archetype—Stone-Keeper, Wind-Stalker, Tide-Walker, or Rhythm-Dancer—feels most familiar to you right now?
What part of the Rhythm-Dancer archetype resonates most with your own experience?
Have you ever felt caught between wildness and structure? How did you navigate that tension?
What does “holding both sides (structure and wildness) lightly” mean to you in your current season of life?
Journaling Prompts
Where in your life do you cling to structure? Where do you chase wildness? What happens in the tension between?
What does rhythm feel like in your body, your relationships, or your work?
Recall a moment when you moved “in step” with life. What allowed that alignment?
How might you begin honoring both sides—wildness and structure—without trying to resolve them?