Having published so much recently, I’ve been thinking about my voice. I have a tendency to go abstract when I start talking about ideas that I think are important.
I’ve been reeling between “this is all intellectualising and useless” and trying to drag it forward with some more personal elements.
When I was young I felt drawn to the depths. I haunted subcultures—first, as a hacker hanging out in IRC rooms, and then as a metalhead playing bass guitar, then as an anarchist trying to identify the source of social inequities, and later as someone drawn to esoteric spirituality as a means of transformation. (I say esoteric here because “being spiritual” is pretty normal these days; the kind of practices I was embarking upon were not.)
I’d love to pretend I’m reporting from a place of enlightened awareness, but the truth is that 90% of whatever wisdom you might find here was stumbled upon through crisis and catastrophe. I’m always trying something, and after a few decades, you get a definitive sense of what does not work.
When I was a teenager, I felt a pervasive sense of yearning for “something more.” The default story of status and success was already ringing hollow and I found myself drawn to figures like Carl Jung and traditions like Taoism.
This morning I naturally woke up, excited, at about 4am.
After letting my confused dog out, I made a flask of tea and took my pre-made breakfast out of the fridge. (Thank you, me.)
I have no calls on the calendar today. I love coaching, but I equally enjoy the days I keep clear for deep work.
I spend a couple of hours organising some notes in Obsidian on a new essay series about “Full-Contact Living.” I have 4 or 5 notes that I’ve been frantically updating over the last few weeks, and I need to distil them down into one index.
Now that I have a presence on multiple internet platforms, I am continually trying to figure out where to say what I want to say.
I have a lot of interests. My background is as a software engineer and leader, but I’m also fascinated by consciousness, meditation and awakening. The main way I earn money is as a coach and consultant to techie folks, but I also teach people how to shake to release tension from their bodies. When left alone, I explore the edge between psychology, philosophy and spirituality. I’m also passionate about the therapeutic power of writing itself, drawn to cultural critique, still obsessed with running and still reading obsessively. I usually sum this up by describing myself as a geek, mystic and malcontent.
I love to tweak and refine on my own. Whether that’s playing with code, words or routines—self-experimentation is how I learn. Growing up as part of the first generation with reliable home Internet access had a big impact.
School curriculums didn’t work for me, but if I could study a book in my own time, I could make things stick. My law teacher wrote in my yearbook that “Daniel has an inimitable style of learning” which involved 50% attendance and top marks.
Writing every day, for 90 days. How did I get here?
A few months ago I went to one of many regional meetups for Sam Harris’ Waking Up app. The organiser mentioned a talk by Francis Weller that had changed her life. It took me a few months to watch it, but I was transfixed.
I bought his book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, which talks a lot about loss:
We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow. The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain.
I’m going to be publishing something every day in Q2.
I made this decision about 48 hours ago and I’m writing this half-way through Day 1. I don’t know whether I’m including weekends or not. There are lots of unanswered questions.
I’ve been writing a lot more this year, particularly on LinkedIn, and across two newsletters. The momentum has been building.
Several things happened recently:
I read a book on grief and thought on “the parts of myself that have not known acceptance.” This made me realise how many of my interests I still keep quiet about.
I watched a few Tyler Cowen interviews and was moved by his uninhibited geekiness (and his own daily publishing on Marginal Revolution).
I spent too much time on LinkedIn, which is many ways the antithesis of everything I hold dear.
Tyler mentioned in one interview that Substack often becomes too personal and full of emotion. It encourages longer-format, original reflections and discourages people from being editors of other peoples ideas. I bristled at first, but it brought me back to the original model of blogging: writing whatever you want on your own quirky website. I did this for years as a teenager and I loved it. Here I am again.
Instead of covering the usual cornucopia of productivity, tech, social commentary & mental health, I will be doubling down on what I care most about: meditation, wisdom and awakening.
I will be doing this on my personal website, but under a new banner: modern mystic. This takeover will last a year. I have other themes that will follow in the coming years. This is a long game.
I needed some time off. As part of an effort to spend less and explore more of what’s around me, I booked a week away near a village called Cwmystwyth in Ceredigion, Wales.
It’s easily drivable from Bristol and I also have friends a little further North, near Machynlleth. I picked it as I wanted to be somewhere remote, near mountains and running water. Check.
Airbnb near Cwmystwyth
Cwmystwyth is a small village nestled alongside the river Ystwyth, which flows all the way west to Aberystwyth. Cwmystwyth literally means “valley of the river Ystwyth.” It sits in the middle of the Cambrian mountains. It is the exact centre point of Wales, according to Wikipedia. This is also West Wales, so it’s pretty wet.
