Without a Reference

Each step made sense

I’ve been thinking about something that took me a long time to notice. Not because it was hidden, but because nothing was obviously wrong.

Life was fine. I was doing okay. I had a business. I went to work every day. I was taking care of my family. On my commute, I was always listening to something. At night, I was usually absorbed in other worlds, books, shows, games, whatever kept my mind occupied.

What I see now is this: there wasn’t a moment where I sat down and decided who I wanted to become. Not deliberately. There were just a lot of small, reasonable adjustments. I responded to what was in front of me. I adapted. I made tradeoffs. And each step made sense.

But at some point, I realized I couldn’t tell you the last time I really chose myself.

There’s an image that keeps coming back to me.

If you put a piece of paper on a copier and make a copy, it looks fine. If you copy that copy, it still looks fine. Nothing breaks. No alarms go off.

But every time you do it, the signal gets a little worse. Edges soften. Details fade. Contrast drops. Each copy looks acceptable on its own. You only notice the loss when you compare it to the original.

At some point, I realized that’s what I’d been doing to myself. Making decisions based on who I was last year. Who I was yesterday. Who was already shaped by habits, feedback, and expectations that I hadn’t chosen, or hadn’t chosen recently enough to remember choosing.

I wasn’t updating from the original anymore. I was updating from a version that had already drifted.

For a long time, I didn’t notice because I was almost always slightly stimulated. Not in a dramatic way. Just enough. Enough entertainment. Enough novelty. Enough distraction to keep going without having to stop.

The problem wasn’t enjoyment. I’m not making an argument against pleasure or rest or absorption in something you love. The problem was that I rarely slowed down long enough to tell whether a change was something I chose, or something I just reacted to.

When you’re constantly stimulated, you keep updating yourself. And eventually, you forget what you’re updating from.

I’m not blaming technology. I’m not blaming culture. I’m not blaming anyone.

Most systems are doing exactly what they’re designed to do. They reward responsiveness. They reward adaptability. They reward flexibility. What they don’t care about is continuity. They don’t care if you stay intact over time. They just care that you keep responding. That you keep coming back for more.

That’s not evil. But it’s not neutral either.

Change isn’t the problem. Growth isn’t the problem.

The problem is change without a reference. If you don’t know what you’re changing from, it’s hard to tell the difference between growth and drift. Between adapting and slowly eroding.

At some point, I realized I didn’t really have a reference anymore. Just a chain of versions of myself that all made sense at the time.

This isn’t about journaling. Or personal branding. Or optimizing yourself into some ideal version. It’s about having something to check against. Something close enough to the original that you can ask a real question: Am I actually being honest with myself here, or am I just good at adapting?

It took me a long time to see this. Not because I was avoiding it. Because I was busy. Busy building. Busy working. Busy carrying responsibility.

Clarity like this doesn’t show up quickly. Usually it shows up after you’ve paid for it.

A friend once asked me, “When are you going to realize that time isn’t infinite?”

That line comes back to me almost every day now. I spent a lot of my adult life avoiding clear decisions about how I wanted to live or why. I paid for that with time. Time I can describe but can’t recover.

I don’t have this fully figured out. I’m still building my own reference. Still figuring out what needs to stay and what needs to change.

But I do know this: updating myself from copies of copies isn’t working. I need something closer to the source. Something I can’t outsource, optimize, or scroll past.

I’m not sure what that looks like for you. I’m still figuring out what it looks like for me.

But I know it starts with noticing. And noticing has a cost.