On paper I was covered, and yet the problem showed up anyway. There was a message I had never sent. It made me wonder what communication and perception have in common. Some people talk to convince, others stay silent and take everything for granted, and what lands on the other side shapes the picture people have of us and of our work.
Can we work on perception by starting from how we communicate?
The message I never sent Read Post »
A math model that aced competition problems but had no use for my work, and a concept that came up while talking with Claude, the invariant. It teaches you to look for what stays put while everything else moves, and sometimes a difference of two on a chessboard is enough to know without trying.
It worked on clients and on people close to me. It gave me no solutions. It gave me something else.
One evening, at eleven, a message arrives that needs an answer. Once I would have replied at once, out of courtesy and anxiety to close things. This time I wrote the answer the next morning, and went quiet. It isn’t ghosting and it isn’t a wall, but something I’m learning to use in this rough patch, at work, with myself, even with a little girl who screams.
What happens when you stop chasing?
I’ll reply tomorrow morning Read Post »
When the coal runs out, Phileas Fogg starts burning the ship’s wood, but in a precise order, beginning with the obvious and leaving the hull untouched. This month I’m trying to do the same with my days. Around me I find many words, said in good faith, that leave it to me to ask.
Then, sitting on a bench, a message arrives that is different from all of them. What was in those few lines?
Which wood to burn Read Post »
I often had to tell my kids “Come to the office with me, I have to finish some work.” Today that happens far less, and a lot of it comes down to tools I already had in my pocket and used halfway. Talking with other people, I noticed the same pattern, well-built tools used little or badly.
Where does it really get stuck? And what can AI do, if it isn’t the answer?
What I Already Had in My Pocket Read Post »
There’s a cost that shows up in no paycheck and no balance sheet. It sits there quietly while we compare jobs and numbers, then one day it makes itself seen, in our mood, our health, the people closest to us. I’ve watched up close what happens when someone decides to stop paying it.
What changes inside a home when a person chooses to feel better, even if it means earning less?
The invisible cost Read Post »
A boulder in a river doesn’t stop it, it changes it. Over time the river wears it down and makes it part of itself. That’s exactly what I’m learning to do with my habits, not just on easy days but especially on hard ones.
What happens when you stop waiting for the ideal moment and start working on it on the worst days instead?
The boulder in the river: building a habit that holds up on hard days Read Post »
On vacation, maybe for the first time, my mind actually stopped. And in that stillness, the ghosts I’ve been working through showed up. Facing them hurts more than ignoring them ever did, but that’s where the real work starts. Coming home hit harder than I expected.
What happens when your brain stops running and starts remapping the connections that used to hurt you?
When You Come Face to Face With Yourself Read Post »
The deepest dark is not the absence of light, it is knowing the light exists but is not yet within reach. In those moments the ethical filter wavers, and the mind risks building dangerous justifications, like Walter White in Breaking Bad.
The difference between slipping into black and staying in legitimate grey, like Churchill during the war, lies entirely in the method and the oversight. Staying steady is difficult. Not impossible.
The deepest dark: when the light already exists but we must still reach it Read Post »
A few days ago, a child angry over an unfair situation had a moment that society would have condemned without appeal. And yet that same society always finds a way to justify violence when it comes from an adult convinced they are right.
Behind that childish anger there was only intelligence with no one listening, in a society that invests far too little in mental health care and far too much in rhetorical calls to old values. What is truly missing is community.
When a child’s anger tells us more than politics does Read Post »
