cultivate your garden
June 15, 2025

Pulling the Thread


One of the most underrated superpowers in life and in storytelling is following the thread way further than anyone else would. Past what’s practical. Past what makes sense.


A couple of my favorite creators currently working in the TV business are Nathan Fielder and John Wilson. Their respective approaches are different but orient around a similar idea of following something too far, much farther than any normal person would. And it’s no coincidence that they work together, with Fielder acting as a producer and helping with the edit on Wilson’s recent work.


Take Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, which might be the most gloriously overcommitted show ever made. Fielder doesn’t just take the bit too far—he turns it into an HBO-funded science experiment in awkwardness and the human struggle to connect. He takes a plot line about airline safety to such an extent that he devotes years of his life learning to fly, despite his obvious lack of aptitude. Can’t get an airline to let him fly one of their planes? That’s no issue for Nathan, he’s willing to lease one on his own rather than change direction. Anchoring his approach is the idea that he’ll follow an idea as far as it can possibly go, not as far as someone “reasonable” would take it.


Wilson does something similar in his documentary-style series, framed as a “How-To” show for things nobody really needs a tutorial on. In one episode, a supply store for amateur sports referees (soccer refs, mostly) becomes an accidental rabbit hole. The cashier casually mentions an upcoming banquet for a local referee association. A normal person would nod politely and move on. Wilson shows up. With his camera. At a banquet he definitely wasn’t invited to. And it’s great TV.


For Fielder and Wilson, following the thread doesn’t just make their shows better—it is the show. It’s the fuel. It’s the reason you suddenly care about some Long Island referee banquet or why a comedian is flying a 747 with a hundred struggling actors as passengers. And for the rest of us? That same instinct can pull you out of the rut of routine and into the weird and wonderful. The insane freedom of free will can be paralyzing, so most people stay on the path of least resistance. But every now and then, it’s worth ramming down a side door into something new.


Quick distinction: this isn’t a squeaky wheel gets the oil argument. It’s not “email 50 people on LinkedIn and hope one of them gets you a job doing tech sales.” This only works in the physical world—the world with strange smells, awkward silences, side streets, and people who do and say unexpected things.


The internet is efficient, but it flattens randomness. Everything gets sorted into inboxes and timelines and tidy little channels. The mess gets filtered out, and so does the magic. There’s a reason we don’t like watching TV or movies where emails and texts drive the plot: it’s boring. It’s sterile. Why would we want life to work that way? The texture of human lives bumping into each other is missing in that case, and this texture is exactly what makes it worthwhile to follow something too far. The reward is in the texture, and it moves people to behave differently than when they receive a message from a stranger.


So what’s your thread? Whatever that thing is, pull on the thread, then follow it further than a reasonable person would. That weird hobby you’ve been circling? That person you met once and haven’t stopped thinking about? That random flyer for an amateur curling league? Go. Follow it. Way past where a sane person would. That’s where the good stuff is. There’s a reason that what lives there is unique and interesting; most people think it’s silly to take it that far, and they miss out.






June 1, 2025

Rice and Beans


I would like to start this by preemptively addressing several valid critiques:



Now that that’s out of the way, here is the kernel of my argument: Rice and beans as a meal tastes good, is filling, is nutritious, and we should all eat it more. And in thinking about that, I got to chewing on, no pun intended, what philosophical ideas I hold that led me to this conclusion, or to being strange enough to want to write about it.


Why Simplicity Matters


For some reason I’m currently unable to pull on a string related to this essay without running into a play on words of some sort, so I’ll just lean into the fact that this quote is from the philosopher Epicurus, who I assume is the namesake of the cooking website Epicurious. The infuriating amount of text and advertisements you have to scroll through on recipe websites is a topic for another day. Here’s what Epicurus had to say about the matter of how we nourish ourselves, from a letter he sent to Menoeceus:


Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a person to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking and renders us fearless of fortune. -Epicurus


A couple things there: First, the benefits of “plain fare” as Epicurus calls it, are enhanced by how a person views it. Of course contextually any food is delicious when you’re starving, as he says, but more interesting to me is the idea that simple food gives pleasure when the pain of want has been removed. What we crave, I think, is often just what we’ve been trained to expect. In the Western world (forgive the generalization), if you’re over to a friend’s house for dinner you probably expect a meat main, a side dish, some sort of salad, perhaps bread and butter, etc. How would you feel if you were at a dinner party with a group of friends and the host brought out two large bowls, one with steamed white rice and one with black beans?


That was the question I asked myself when brainstorming about this, and even though I’m a rice and beans advocate I would be thrown off by the arrangement. It’s not seen as food fit for a special occasion. But as Epicurus calls it, this is the pain of want. I want a certain thing, and I am brought pain when I don’t get it. Not real pain, obviously—just the dull ache of unmet dinner expectations. Think the Dinner Party episode of the sitcom The Office.


So I’d advocate that we should habituate ourself to simple foods that are needful for health, not switching our diets over entirely or anything but just working towards more balance. One obvious problem with this is that the tides of the modern food system are pushing against us. Eating rice and beans goes against the current of sugar and fat that I find sweeps me away more often than I’d like to admit in the signage of grocery store shelves.


Longevity in Plastic


I'm not talking about living longer, though whether people’s fight to live forever is one worth fighting would be fun to dig into another day. I’m looking at you Brian Johnson, though I might be looking through you if your skin becomes any more see-through. No, I’m talking about the longevity of the bag of rice in my pantry. I’m moving soon, and found myself a bit nostalgic about the amount of meals this 5 pound bag of dry Whole Foods rice has provided me since coming into my life last fall.


I’m nearly through the bag as you can see, and the send off for it should line up with me moving out of my apartment. This bag of rice cost me $6.99, and at 50 servings total of cooked rice, shakes out to 14 cents per meal. In the terms of my generation, the tip I pay on an artistically crafted mocha latte could also buy me 7+ servings of rice.


Complete aside, but if you’re going to do this, please get a rice cooker. This will offset the massive savings mentioned in the previous paragraph but it’s a worthy investment. It tastes better. It just does. And it’s easier. My cherished Zojirushi Micom is the gold standard I think, but really any one will do. Also this may be controversial but wash the rice. It tastes better. It just does. Thank you Bill Simmons for this rhetorical device.


Now beans are a little bit more costly, but it’s critical to have the protein and nutrients provided by the legumes to round out your meal. I mix in great northern beans, black beans, pinto, garbanzo. Really you can’t go wrong. And if there’s some cheap vegetables at the grocery store in bulk, go ahead and get those involved too. All in all, rice and beans will let you eat cheap and healthy, and if your journey is anything like mine you’ll grow to love them. And maybe you’ll get the enjoyment that I think can come from something simple that fulfills all you need from it. In a culture where everything is designed to make us want more, choosing something that asks for nothing extra feels like going against the grain and being full enough not to care.






May 27, 2025

Bad Things Will Happen


I’ve always been someone who worries. Constantly. About everything. As my parents will recount, any time the gas tank went below half on a family road trip, I would start asking when we’d be making a pit stop to fuel up. That instinct stuck with me as I grew up. I’d spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about reducing risk—spotting problems early, heading them off.


In some ways my cautiousness has been helpful in life, and I don’t really regret being someone who plays it safer than a typical person. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that the energy I was spending on reducing risk and imagining things that could go wrong was taking a toll on my mental state.


It’s not just me, though. Culturally, we’re sold the fantasy that with the right routine, the right mindset, the right app, we can outmaneuver chaos. There’s a whole economy around it: planners, trackers, wellness strategies, and productivity tools designed to sand down the sharp edges of life. But life can’t be made smooth. It’s bumpy, unscripted, and stubbornly unpredictable.


What we’re really doing is performing control. We curate rituals and routines not just to stay organized, but to convince ourselves we’re in the driver’s seat and things are going according to plan. We build detailed calendars, track our moods, drink green vitamin mocktails in the morning, all to signal, “I’ve got this.” It’s self-soothing disguised as self-improvement. Control cosplay. And trying to optimize your way out of being human? That might be the most exhausting part of all.


The way that I’ve been able to somewhat overcome this? Accept that bad things can, and likely will, happen to me. And when I say “bad things,” I mean everything from slight inconveniences to major problems. I may step in dog poop at some point. I may suffer a serious injury at some point or lose my job. It could be that none of these things happen, but the power comes in accepting that they might, and that each of these things is at least partially out of my control.


Why is this liberating? Simply put, it allows you to let go of the anxiety around these bad things happening. Brain bothering you about the fact that something may go wrong? No need to concern yourself with it, something probably will go bad. And that’s ok. In fact, it’s more than ok, it’s the nature of a complex human life interacting with hundreds of independent variables each and every day. That’s so much more doable than trying to logic your way out of anxiety, which, for me, has never worked. The simplicity is what I find so appealing about this idea.


I know all this. I believe it. And still, I’ll feel my chest tighten pulling into a packed lot, realizing I didn’t pre-pay for parking because it felt too neurotic. It’s not graceful. But that’s the thing: this isn’t a finish line you reach. It’s a muscle. You build it. You forget. You mess up. You start again.


Important distinction: this isn’t some stoic call for detachment, and I’m not saying life is just a long string of suffering. I don’t believe that. What I do think is that it’s surprisingly freeing to stop pretending you can outmaneuver life. You’ll miss deadlines, people will flake, your car will break down at the worst time. But knowing that, really accepting it, makes the rest of it easier to enjoy. Walking around on a sunny day. A good meal with other people, or on your own. You stop holding your breath waiting for things to go wrong, and start living, knowing that some of them will. Not in denial. Just with more ease.






May 26, 2026

The Case For Un-Algorithming


It has become common among the upper middle class lately to say that the internet is bad. In some ways of course it is, and in other ways it’s not, like most things, but that is not the point of this writing. We all know at least one person who has downgraded their iPhone to some sort of flip phone or monstrosity with a sliding keyboard in recent years. Other than 9-5 remote work and an episode of prestige television between 7 and 10pm, these aspirational individuals have untangled their lives from the spider’s web of tech’s spiral during the 2010s and 2020s.


I’ve had this same instinct, and to an extent I envy people who are actually able to pull the trigger on getting rid of their smartphones. But instead of this impractical and intimidating step, I have a more achievable suggestion for my generation of digital natives: Reduce interactions with all things algorithmic on your phone. This could be TikTok, Reels, Youtube Shorts, even AI-enhanced Spotify Playlists. Really it’s anything where an app or website learns about what you respond to and feeds you things that you want to see, or more specifically things that it thinks will keep your attention. I’ve been working on this for the past few months, and I’ve been shocked by the improvement in my mental well-being and how I relate to the internet.


Upon reflection, there are a few reasons that un-algorithming has been so rewarding for me personally, and why I think it could help you too.


1. You consciously choose the content you interact with, rather than the internet ‘happening’ to you as a passive consumer.


This realization about algorithms occurred to me when I was logged out of my YouTube account for whatever reason, so when I went to the web page I was suggested a range of default popular videos from creators like MrBeast. For a moment I thought about what I wanted to search, but then realized that I had no sense of what I wanted, and originally opened the page assuming that something would be suggested to me. When that didn’t happen, it drove home the fact that I hadn’t made a conscious decision to search up a video I found interesting or entertaining. I had half-asleep pressed a button for dopamine release, but wasn’t given any. I was a hamster licking an empty sugar water dispenser.


Deciding to leave it logged out to see how my behavior changed, it forced me to only open the site when I actually wanted to watch something. I still watch sports highlights, chess videos, and other things I enjoy, but only when I’ve made a choice to do so. Being an active consumer of content I like rather than passively opening YouTube has been mentally comforting, and has reduced the dehumanizing feeling I would sometimes have when scrolling until my finger hurt hoping I’d be fed something good.


2. You will more frequently decide that you have no further content you want to choose to consume, and therefore will close your phone or computer and do something else.


When there is no algorithm guiding you, each successive piece of media you consume must be elected. You’re more likely to get bored of your hone/laptop, or realize it’s too much of a pain to think of a new thing to search up or watch, and this is a good thing. You will do something else, anything else, and you’ll thank yourself for it.


3. Random/disconnected discovery becomes more likely.


This piece stands out to me relating to music, but applies to other forms of media too. Algorithms on Spotify suggest you indie music if you like indie, and suggest you death metal if you like death metal. This is fine, but it’s not discovery, it’s a bid to stuff you with what you already enjoy. Instead of a daylist or an AI-enhanced playlist, ask a friend to send you a new album, or think of a word to type into the search bar and find a user-created playlist with 40 songs and 4 followers. You may hate the particular song, but you’ll feel like a person in the real human world. And of course, you may love the song and enrich your life with a new genre of artistic expression.


If this resonates with you, try reducing your use of algorithmic media. You won’t miss out on important things, as none of your phone calls from grandma, text messages from friends, or important work emails are algorithmically driven (for now). In fact, you will only miss out on things that you don’t need to see, as the only entity that believes you need to see algorithmic content is something designed to capture your attention and package it into units to advertise against.


So stop using algorithmic apps and websites when it suits you, and turn off related features when it’s practical. Feel your humanity return to you, and make the internet feel a little bit more like a place of connection, discovery, and enrichment than it does today.


Thanks for reading, and I would love to hear your thoughts. And remember to cultivate your garden.