Nobody warns you about the layer underneath the layer. This is what we do about it.
How It Works
The Weekly Peel It started as a 6-month experiment. Now 52 weeks in with a goal of 100 — because that's how onions work in my story. You peel one layer and find another underneath it.
Each week has a named layer — a specific theme pulled from the real experience of trying to get back to who you were before life told you who to be. A deep dive into that layer, some deeper than others. And a universal angle written, so your story becomes the reader's mirror.
This isn't a journal. It's a documented excavation. From authentic raw stories and lessons and a little humor in an ever-changing world.
How many layers are left? That's the wrong question.
The Being Coached Layer Dr. Larry Goodman — 40+ years in practice, psychology background, NET practitioner — gives his unfiltered mirror on the week's theme. No polish. No coaching script. Just the standard he holds himself and everyone around him to. The role is open. The layer stays the same.
Books to Use Not book summaries. Not quotes dropped for credibility. Books pulled off the shelf when a specific moment calls for them — the passage that matches the exact layer being peeled that week. AI helps find the precise words for what you half-remembered. Then they go to work.
Original Short Films Every week's theme becomes a short film. The Rebel Onion character lives the lesson — not narrates it. Built from scratch using Leonardo.ai, Veo, and ElevenLabs — and experimenting with other tools to learn and apply as they emerge.
Scored, voiced, and edited weekly. Under 30 to 60 seconds. Guerrilla style storytelling — a complete story in one short.
Haven't let AI do a whole story yet because it strips what's left. Not to say I won't try it down the line — but for now I enjoy stitching the scenes into a weekly topic inspired story.
This Got Me Thinking A weekly find. Sometimes a video, a quote, an Instagram post, a book passage — whatever connected to the week's layer out in the world. One item. A sentence or two on why it matters. No filler.
Who This Is For
You didn't take the easy door.
Maybe the door was right there — the family business, the built-in network, the path everyone assumed you'd walk. Or maybe you built something real from nothing and watched it dissolve anyway.
Either way you're here. In the messy middle. Navigating a world that changed the rules without telling you.
You're not lost. You're not in crisis. You're in excavation.
This newsletter is for the person doing that work — and refusing to stop.
Who's Writing This
I'm Martin. 48. Father. Designer. Artist. Author. Songwriter. And still unpeeling.
I grew up in my family's freight business in Miami. Long hours, flight nights that sometimes ran until 2am, lunches with my dad, opening and closing the warehouse because he trusted no one. The path was laid out. The paycheck came. So did the verbal abuse, the judgment, and the slow realization that I wasn't growing — I was performing.
I quit. Several times. The final time was 2013.
What followed was thirteen years of building my own thing — Nitram Design, a tech startup that raised four million dollars in the Web3 space, a creative trying to prove the path he chose was worth what it cost. The startup dissolved. AI came. The industry shifted. I was left standing in the rubble of something I'd believed in.
Now navigating what it means to be a creative in a world where AI can replicate the craft but not the lived experience behind it — I figured I'd document the process. An AI that could correct my grammar and help me structure my creative mind and thoughts. No editor, no red pen, no critiques of my bad grammar. It was time.
This was never about documenting a success story. It was about the becoming. Writing on what I know, what I've learned, what I've been coached through, and the books that cracked something open. Even when I started this in 2025 I wasn't where I am now — and honestly thought I'd have a Web3 success story to tell. But that's what makes this the becoming. Being in action. Documenting what actually happens when you refuse to quit but don't yet know what you're building toward — yet you know you've got something with all that you've lived and learned.
100 weeks. (Speculative — I plan, God laughs.)
No filter. (Well — sometimes I can't give away all the magic.)
That's The Rebel Onion.
The Rebel Onion Manifesto
We live in a rigged world.
Billions spent on psychology to manipulate you. Algorithms designed to validate your worst impulses. Deceptive practices at every turn. Vague truths sold as certainties. Agendas hidden behind slick marketing.
Even the tools we use to think — AI, LLMs, platforms — are built to retarget, reshape, and redirect us toward someone else's ultimate plan.
And yet.
There's still a voice inside you that knows the truth. Your truth. Even when it hurts. Even when it costs you comfort, approval, or peace.
The Rebel Onion is built on one principle:
Stay authentic. With discernment. With core values intact.
Lead by example. Tell stories from truth — not from the highlight reel. Not from the sanitized version that keeps everyone comfortable.
From the messy, real, unfiltered middle of trying to break cycles, own your worth, and build a life that's actually yours.
This isn't self-help. This is self-truth.
And if that stings — good. That's how you know it's real.
The Book: Where the Journey Began
Before The Rebel Onion existed, I spent a year in therapy and coaching — back in 2015, sitting across from Dr. Goodman every Friday morning at 9am in Miami.
Layers of conditioning. Family patterns. Shame. Bad business decisions and so much more. Limiting beliefs I didn't know I was carrying.
Then a few months in, he had me hold my arm up when something triggered me. I was introduced to Neuro-Emotional Technique. It changed my life. You can read that journey — and the tools that came with it — in the book.
That year became:
Fridays with Goodman: A Striving Artist, a Good-Man, and the Universal Principles at Play.
It's where the peeling began the healing process. And where I first understood that life isn't about throwing the peel away or hiding it — it's about learning from it. Seeing that even the hard layers held a purpose. Even when they sucked, they had a reason for being there.
They were part of your becoming.
The Becoming Blueprint
44 layers. 30 pages. One framework for the man navigating the messy middle.
The Becoming Blueprint is a guided reflection system built from everything documented in the first 52 weeks of this newsletter. It gives you the named layers, the High-Fidelity AI Reflection Prompts, and the structure to excavate your own story — privately, at your own pace.
Contact
Email: theonionrebel@gmail.com
Design & Marketing Services: nitramdesign.com
