The cord hangs heavy
Discipline crouches,
A presence felt, not held,
Time moves, but nothing stirs,
Unfinished work.
The spark waits, patient as stone
Discipline Doesn’t Arrive On Its Own
I am really struggling to get 2025 started. I’ve been pulling the starter cord over and over, but nothing is turning. It’s cold, dark, the news is a trash fire, everyone’s struggling to get work, and the media is making its money from a grim cacophony of crises and catastrophe that feels impossible to tune out.
I’ve got three things I need to get done before the 18th. All of them are half-finished projects I started before Christmas, which means 2024 is still hanging around, trailing behind me like a shadow I can’t quite shake.
I know what needs to be done. I need to do the things that need doing. But here I am, standing in the cold, pulling at the cord.
I thought I had a decent handle on my attention—on being able to focus and hold it until a job is finished. But right now, I just can’t seem to do it. I feel fine, physically and mentally, but for some reason, I can’t close out 2024. It’s as if the self-discipline I relied on has stayed behind, stuck in last year.
Discipline, I’ve realised, isn’t some inborn trait that a few lucky people have. It’s a habit—a mode of action you build through repetition. Like any habit, it takes effort to keep it going. I’ve heard people describe discipline as a muscle, and that works to a point. But for me, discipline is more like a cat. It doesn’t come when you call. It doesn’t follow commands. You can’t force it to show up.
You have to coax it into the room, make it feel welcome, and show it you’re ready to work with it. Sometimes, it curls up beside me when I’m excited about what I’m doing. But most of the time, it hides under the furniture, and I have to sit quietly and wait for it to come back. The trick is not to give up when it disappears—discipline always returns if you’re patient enough to keep trying.
It’s not like I’m missing strategies. I know how this works. I’ve read the books, followed the advice, and built habits. But right now, none of it feels accessible. Productivity tips don’t even register. I know what matters, but I’m just… not doing it.
For most of my life, I’ve been in a fight with myself. A constant voice in my head telling me I should be doing more, that I’m lazy, that I’m falling behind. Even when I’ve been productive, that voice hasn’t gone away—it just shifted the goalposts. If I listen to it too much, I get The Dread.
This self-criticism has driven me at times as a primary motivator, but it’s also draining. It made rest feel like failure and unfinished tasks feel like moral failings. The worst part is, I know it’s not true. Logically, I know I’m not lazy. I know I’m doing my best. But that voice doesn’t care about logic—it feeds on comparison, on the idea that everyone else is doing more, achieving more, being more.
No one shamed themselves into being more productive for long.
Right now however, I don’t feel guilty about not finishing the things I started in 2024—yet. I still have six days. But even so, letting go of the guilt doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s strange to stop tying my worth to my output. It might be freeing—who knows.
This isn’t the first time I’ve felt stuck, and it won’t be the last. But I’ve learned that discipline isn’t about being perfect or always feeling motivated. It’s about showing up—imperfectly, inconsistently, but with intention.
No overthinking, no elaborate plans—just me, the tasks, and the doing.
Discipline doesn’t arrive on its own.
On The Blog:
Living Alongside Computer People
I do appreciate where critics are coming from though, but let’s be honest: we already have AI-generated characters—agents—living alongside us in online spaces. Many are even connected to cryptocurrency wallets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And I get it—there’s something deeply uncanny about sharing online spaces with entities that aren’t human.
But here’s the thing: social media has already dehumanised us. It has trained us to behave like robots, to perform predictable scripts, to game algorithms for engagement. In many ways, AI profiles aren’t the cause of this transformation—they’re the proof of it.
The idea that we can avoid a future where social networks are populated by AI-generated profiles? That ship has sailed.
Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️
Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
Terminal Access
dimensions of experience: a (very) preliminary theory of futuring: Paul Graham Rave over at worldbuilding.agency suggests that futures are best understood as narratives. This allows comparisons based on media and storytelling methods.
toward a unified theory of futuring
All modes of futuring produce things that can be understood as narratives—not just experiential and narrative forms, but also foresight reports and projected-profit graphs and architectural maquettes and consumer electronics advertisements, all of which, knowingly or not, manifest futurity.
My main tool for presenting this argument will be the 2×2 matrix which has, for reasons fair and foul alike, become a cliché of futures work. To turn an overused and underexamined method back upon the field as a tool of methodology seems apropos, particularly when it comes to its more liminal and vital practices—but it also provides a simple, accessible way of thinking about the distinct dimensions of a thing. So: when it comes to futuring, we can consider two dimensions along which any given work can be placed. Those two dimensions are scale (X-axis) and perspective (Y-axis).
Dipping the Stacks
I see the exhaustion in my non-media friends, whose early Facebook and Instagram posting habits have faded into a single seasonal shot of their kids — if that. I see it in various influencers and creators quitting the business entirely. I see it from writers here on Substack, posting on Notes about how much they hate Notes because all they really want from this platform is the ability to write for an audience that wants to read their work, not react to their posts.
‘If 1.5m Germans have them there must be something in it’: how balcony solar is taking off
Balcony solar panels can save 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill and, with vertical surface area in cities larger than roof space, the appeal is clear
Many people have lamented that kids these days say they want to be famous YouTubers instead of astronauts. Setting aside any other implicit values here, that points to a generation of young people who simply cannot see any purpose to living other than to seek attention
I no longer want to identify with victimhood (regardless of whether I have been a victim of deliberate harm). If I look back to my twenties and early thirties, I was a master of making excuses. Now I take responsibility for my own actions in the world and am glad of the teachers who have asked me to step up, time and again, rather than shrink away from challenges. This sets me against the prevailing culture but as the Classics say, ‘the sage is out of step with the times but in tune with the seasons.’
If you’ve tried to search for a recipe or product review recently, I don’t need to tell you that Google search results have gone to shit. You would have already noticed that the first few non-ad results are SEO optimized sites filled with affiliate links and ads.
Reading
I finally finished The Ordinal Society by Marion Fourcade. I hope we can all stop talking about legibility now. This book draws a line under all that discourse. The final word. We can now move on and begin to talk about what it means to live in such a condition.
I burnt through the Warhammer audio book for Broken Crusade by Steven B. Fischer. A compelling last stand story. It was narrated by BBC actor Alex Lanipekun. He’s got one hell of a voice that fits Space Marines and Grimdark perfectly.
Started reading Focus: The ASML Way by Marc Hijink after a recommendation from a rando on Twitter. This book is about the history and personalities behind ASML the Dutch company that makes silicon chip lithography machines. It’s fantastic. I will be updating my history of computing books soon.
Music
Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs Out (LP)
The Lambrini Girls full length is a belter. Every song on this album is a single. It’s Fucking Punk Rock. Can’t recommend this enough. The video for Cuntology 101 is rad:
Remember Kids:
True ritual is as much action as word; it is Will
LIBER LIBRÆ – Aleister Crowley
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