About

I’m trying to figure out how a person stays whole.

Not whole in the sense of healed or optimized. Whole in the sense of continuous. Recognizable to yourself over time. Still the same person after years of adapting, responding, and becoming whatever the situation seemed to require.

I spent twenty years in infrastructure and IT, mostly supporting software engineers. I was good at solving problems. I was good at explaining how things worked. I was good at being useful.

What I wasn’t good at was noticing how much I was drifting. Small adjustments, reasonable tradeoffs, one adaptation at a time. None of it felt like loss. All of it added up.

A friend once asked me, “When are you going to realize that time isn’t infinite?” That question changed something. I’m still figuring out what.

This is where I write about that. Not answers. Not frameworks. Just the questions I can’t put down:

How does drift happen without anything breaking?

What do you owe yourself once you’ve seen clearly?

Where does openness have to end and selection begin?

What does it mean to live in a way that can withstand real instruction?

I also make videos. The writing and the videos are two forms of the same inquiry. Sometimes the essay comes first. Sometimes the video does. They’re not transcripts of each other.

If you’re looking for productivity advice or self-improvement frameworks, this isn’t for you.

If you’re trying to figure out how to stay intact while building a life, you might find something useful here.

I don’t know where this goes. I’m writing to find out.

—Thomas