Welcome back. This is part 7 in an 8-part series about our personal sense of agency. In the last part, we explored agency as a form of participation in a world that rewards us for relinquishing it. We examined how it arises within resistance, takes shape through practice, and expresses itself through attention, volition, and d…

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I don’t have time to write poetry. 
Life is too full. Too much friction. 
Too many tasks left to be done. 
It's such a silly addiction.

This is ridiculous. It really is. 
I have better things to do with my time. 
After all, I’m an important person. 
Why bother thinking up words that rhyme?

I have bills to pay, investments to make. 
Money’s what matter…

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🎤 “Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!”

Okay, that was my best Michael Buffer impersonation. I’m not sure if I hit the mark, but let’s go with it… Cue the spotlight and several thousand stunned Substack subscribers fumbling for their popcorn…

In this corner: – a self-proclaimed writer, researcher, and social scientist, with the title of “Internet Personality” b…

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Henri Bergson and Carlo Rovelli’s perspectives on time, Hofstadter’s strange loop, Thomas Nagel’s musings, the lyrical ins…

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Welcome back. This is Part 6 of an 8-part essay series on agency. In the last part, we stepped out of theory and into felt experience. We explored agency as something relational and rhythmic – recognizing agency as a volitional moment based on where we place our attention. Attention and volition (manasikāra and cetanā) became …

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My eldest son has been wanting a phone for some time now.

Years ago, I set a rule for all of my kids: if they want a phone, they need to read a couple articles by on tech and mental health (this one in particular), and then write a report on what they learned and how they planned to use technology differently. From that, I would turn the report into a c…

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If you’ve made it this far in this series, welcome back. This has become more than just an essay. It’s become a journey. And thank you for joining me down this path.

In Part 1, we explored a question: What is agency, really? And why do we seem to be losing it? In Part 2, we traced a brief history of agency, from ancient Greek ph…

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So much of our experience is shaped by language. Words help us make sense of what we feel, see, and believe. They point us toward connection, understanding, even beauty. But they’re also just… symbols. Approximations. Fragile bridges stret…

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If this is your first time here, I’d recommend starting from the beginning. You’re landing in the middle of a long conversation, and this part is the longest so far (buckle up!). This conversation began with the rise of artificial intelligence and turned quickly toward something more personal: our own sense o…

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The blessing and curse of seeing the path ahead is that it can sometimes be accompanied by the weight of …

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In part 2 of this essay, we looked at determinism as one of the most enduring, and increasingly persuasive, arguments against the existence of free will. The idea, as Sapolsky and others have laid it out, is relatively simple: every thought, feeling, decision, or impulse arises within the causal order of…

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You help me see reality not as a disconnected isolation of things and events, but as a field interwoven in dance.

Remembering one particular dance from nineteen years ago, the world melted and time blurred. On that…

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Before agency became a buzzword in the age of AI, it was a philosophical dilemma, a spiritual koan, and still today, a neuroscientific puzzle. The question of whether we truly have the power to choose freel…

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The night before, I had been thinking about curiosity as an antidote to boredom. About how quickly judgment closes the door on possibility, how presence, especially in stillness, asks us to pause – to meet the moment before reacting to it.

That night I dreamt I was living another life. I was alone. L…

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In March 2025, a study out of UC San Diego made history. For the first time, a machine (OpenAI’s GPT-4.5) passed the original version of the Turing test. Not the simplified version often invoked in media headlines, but the real thing: Turing’s three-player “imitation game,” where human judges converse simultaneously with on…

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The Hollow

I carried it for years.
A small light,
curled in the hollow
just beneath my chest.

I thought it was mine.
I protected it.
Wrapped it in reason,
in rules,
in the story of who I was.

Seasons passed.
The shell thickened.
The light dimmed.

One morning,
I found a sparrow had made a nest
in …

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Dear Substack Community:
Strike that.
Dear World:

There’s something I need to admit – not just to myself, but out loud. There’s power in the commitment that comes with saying something publicly. I need to address this, not because it's surprising, or because it’s new, but because I’ve finally stopped tryin…

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No edge. No wound. No need to begin.
Only this weightless belonging, vast without question.
Unfolding, breathing into being, like light drawn gently
through the leaves at dawn.
Everything is here, uncounted, unmeasured.
Everywhere is only this. Everywhen, stillness.
There is no absence to define. No reaching. No n…

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"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

— Mark Twain (I think it’s Twain… No, I’m certain of it.)

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The Ancient Teachers

I walk the mountain paths, searching for something lost –
Not a thing I can name, but something once felt.
The shape of it hovers at the edge of thought,
just beyond the reach of remembering.

I wonder what I might become, who I will be, what I will do –
a part of me waits for a calling in order to be cal…

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