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The Thomas Fast | Third Commitment · September 15, 2026PHIL BELIGHT
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Third Commitment · September 15 at 22:10 ET
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Water only • Carefully tracked and conducted under appropriate supervision.
V3 · Third commitment · September 15, 2026 · 22:10 ET · 459 hours
The Thomas Fast THIRD TIME’S A CHARM
Third time’s a charm. I have started this commitment twice before, and both attempts taught me something, but this one feels different. For reasons I cannot completely explain, I keep feeling like finishing these 459 hours is necessary, almost like it gives me access to something in myself I cannot reach without doing it. I do not know what the powers are or what happens on the other side. I just know I am called to finish it, while using these 19 days to be still, create, speak more candidly, finish what I have been procrastinating on, and keep my word to myself.
First attemptJuly 31 · 16:44 → August 9Second attemptSeptember 14 · 19:19 → September 15 · 20:08Third attemptSeptember 15 · 22:10 → October 5 · 01:10Commitment459 Hours
Third time’s a charm
First attemptJuly 31 · 16:44 → August 9I started. I stopped. I learned.
Second attemptSeptember 14 · 19:19 → September 15 · 20:0824h 49m · commitment ended
Third attemptSeptember 15 · 22:10 → October 5 · 01:10459 hours · this is the commitment
Third time’s a charm.
If you have not seen Everything Everywhere All at Once, or at least conceptually understand the idea of that movie, I’ll give a brief understanding of what I’m talking about. If it still doesn’t make sense to you after that, then this post just may not be for you. And I’m okay with that. In the movie, there are these moments where somebody has to do something that seems completely random or absurd in this reality in order to access an ability from another version of themselves. Bite your toes, stand on one foot, do a twist, whatever the thing is, and suddenly you have access to something you did not have access to before. For some reason I cannot fully explain, I keep feeling like completing this 19-day, 459-hour fast is that for me.
I have been struggling to complete this fast since July, and part of the struggle has been me negotiating with myself after the fact. Fasting is something I know I am capable of doing, and I also know it is difficult, but I have had to be honest with myself that sometimes even doing something difficult can become spiritual bypassing. You can choose the hard thing you already know how to do and call that the work while avoiding the work you actually know you are called to do. For me that means writing, creating, finishing projects, recording content, speaking more candidly and openly about everything in my life, sitting with myself without constantly finding another thing to do, and actually putting into the world the things I keep saying I am supposed to put into the world.
The first time I started, I was not as prepared, settled, or stable as I needed to be and I eventually stopped. The second time I recommitted on September 14 at 19:19, made it until September 15 at 20:08, and I negotiated with myself again. Then at 22:10 I started a third time. At this point my body is capable of what I am asking it to do, my life is settled in a way it was not before, and I have run out of explanations that I actually believe. So third time’s a charm is not me pretending the first two attempts did not happen. It is me deciding they do not get to become permission to stop trying.
And this is the part that may sound crazy, but I keep feeling like finishing this is going to give me powers. I do not know what the powers are. I do not know why I feel called to this particular thing or what exactly is supposed to happen when I finish it. Maybe the power is discipline. Maybe it is clarity. Maybe it is trusting myself differently because I finally have evidence that when I tell myself I am going to do something, I do it. Maybe it opens something creatively that I cannot see from where I am standing right now. Maybe nothing mystical happens at all. I genuinely do not know. I just know that for some reason this feels necessary, and I have learned enough in my life to know that I do not always have to understand why something is necessary before I honor the fact that I keep being called to it.
I also think I am beginning to understand that whether there is some literal thing waiting for me on the other side almost does not matter. If I believe completing this is going to change something, then completing it requires me to become a person who can do something I have twice allowed myself not to finish. That changes something by itself. I am creating a reality in which something has to come from it because I am doing something different. I am changing the variable. I am removing the negotiation. I am creating for 19 days instead of procrastinating. I am being quiet when I want noise. I am being still when I want distraction. I am saying the things I have been hesitant to say. I am finishing the things I have been putting off. Whatever version of me exists after 459 hours will have 459 hours of evidence that the version of me who started this kept his word.
So maybe that is the Everything Everywhere All at Once part of this for me. Maybe the strange thing does not contain the power. Maybe doing the strange thing gives you access to a version of yourself you could not reach from where you were standing. I do not know exactly what I am supposed to have access to when I finish this. I do not know what the powers are. I do not know why this is the thing. I just know I am called to finish it, and I know it is necessary. So this time I am not negotiating with myself about whether I still mean what I meant when I started. I do. Third time’s a charm. I finish this one.
I don’t know what the powers are. I just know I’m supposed to finish this to find out.
01 — About Thomas
February 21, 1988 — May 28, 2026
Thomas E. Jones Jr. “Dolo”
Thomas was my godbrother, a father, a Milwaukee rapper and producer, and someone whose life cannot be reduced to the way it ended.
Phil and ThomasThomas “Dolo” Jones · 1988–2026
More than a headline.
Thomas was born on February 21, 1988, and died on May 28, 2026, at 38 years old. He was known throughout Milwaukee as Dolo and released music as Pwdrbby Dolo, working as both a rapper and producer. To the people who loved him, he was also family, a father, a friend, a creative soul, and a man whose faith mattered deeply to him.
The news reports document what happened. They do not contain the fullness of who he was. The Thomas Fast is my attempt to honor that fullness through discipline, grief, memory, reflection, and creation. I committed to 459 hours of fasting—one hour for every month Thomas lived—as a tangible reminder that every life is measured by far more than the way it ends.
The fast began with grief, but the grief has opened into something much larger.
When my godbrother Thomas was shot and killed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I found myself grieving in a way that felt fundamentally different from every other loss I have experienced. It is the first deeply personal death I have encountered since arriving at a radically different understanding of life, death, consciousness, interconnectedness, and the invisible ways our lives continue to shape one another long after someone is physically gone. What surprised me most was not the depth of my grief, because I loved Thomas deeply and always will, but the nature of it. His death has felt less like disappearance and more like the realization that someone who profoundly shaped your life is no longer physically reachable while somehow remaining deeply present within it.
At the same time, I could not stop thinking about how little separated Thomas’s life from mine. We grew up in many of the same environments, exposed to many of the same realities, and I have become increasingly convinced that people do not emerge independently from circumstance in the simplistic way we often pretend they do. A different teacher. A different opportunity. A different moment of mercy. A different intervention. So many lives pivot on moments that seem insignificant at the time but ultimately become the difference between entirely different futures. Thomas’s life reminded me just how fragile that distance really is.
That realization has only reinforced the work I have been doing publicly over the last year. Whether I am writing about race, masculinity, neurodivergence, power, economics, or human behavior, I keep returning to the same conviction: I cannot separate people from the systems that cultivate them. Accountability matters, and so do consequences, but understanding why something happened is not the same thing as excusing it. I have come to believe that compassion and accountability are not competing values. They are two truths that often have to exist together.
The Thomas Fast was born from that tension. For 459 hours—one hour for every month Thomas lived—I am undertaking a water fast, consuming only water while stepping away from distraction, routine, and ordinary consumption to create space for grief, reflection, prayer, writing, creative work, and deeper understanding. It is not about punishment or proving endurance. It is about honoring a life that continues to teach me that every headline conceals a human being, every statistic contains a story, and every person exists inside systems far more complicated than we usually allow ourselves to acknowledge. My hope is that this project encourages people to become a little slower to judge, a little quicker to understand, and a little more willing to sit with complexity before reaching certainty.
The 459-hour water fast is personal. The work surrounding it is being built in public.
Support helps Phil sustain the time, technology, production, documentation, research, and basic infrastructure required to share this medically tracked water fast and the experience independently. It also creates room to remain focused on the purpose of the fast rather than turning the project into advertising.
02 — Support the Journey
Help carry the work through the third commitment.
If the project has moved you, helped you reflect, or made you feel less alone in your own process of grief and transformation, a contribution is one way to help sustain it.
Primary option
Buy Me a Coffee
The simplest way to make a one-time contribution toward the fast, its documentation, and the independent work surrounding it.
More focus. Better documentation. Greater independence.
Daily writing and reflectionVideo and live-stream productionPhotography and documentary editingEquipment, storage, software, and hostingResearch and long-form creative developmentTime to complete the journey without advertiser pressure
Support is not only financial
Follow. Share. Participate.
If contributing is not available to you, sharing an update with one person is meaningful. The purpose is not simply to complete a fast. It is to build a public conversation around grief, discipline, solitude, transformation, and what people can create from the experiences that might otherwise break them.
The Thomas Fast — Third Time’s a Charm is a voluntary prolonged water fast undertaken in remembrance of Thomas and as a personal period of reflection and creative discipline. It is being carefully tracked and conducted under appropriate supervision. Nothing on this website is medical advice or encouragement for others to attempt prolonged fasting. Contributions support Phil BeLight’s independent creative work and are not tax-deductible charitable donations.
