Ten sentences. No more, no less.

1. I’m writing this with a limit, not to be clever, but to make starting easier.
2. The constraint gives things a shape and changes how I pay attention.
3. I notice the pull to “optimise”: to make this worth the space it takes up.
4. That impulse is familiar, but I’m practicing not following it.
5. Working within a boundary makes it clearer what wants to be said now and what can wait.
6. It shows how quickly I reach for an ending instead of staying with what’s here.
7. That alone feels worth paying attention to.
8. Nothing here resolves, and that feels right.
9. The constraint worked by getting me to the page.
10. I’m stopping because the boundary says so.

I haven’t published anything here in a long time. Five years, give or take. Long enough that returning doesn’t feel like picking something back up… more like starting again, but differently. This post is an experiment in that return.

For a while the idea of writing publicly felt heavier than it needed to be. Anything I thought about posting carried an implied expectation: to be useful, to be coherent, to add something finished to the pile (particularly after co-writing and publishing a real-life book).

The years since 2020 have reshaped how many of us think about time, energy, and attention. A global pandemic, sustained uncertainty, and a steady accumulation of world-level disruption have recalibrated what we can hold, what we can sustain, and what we choose to give our focus to.

What’s shifted recently for me is less about confidence and more about permission. Permission to write without a clear endpoint. To let practice lead instead of outcomes. So I’m reframing this return as an experiment: provisional, bounded, allowed to be incomplete.

What changed in five years?

A lot, and not all of it cleanly. My work has deepened and I’ve come to value learning that doesn’t announce itself immediately. I’m less interested in declaring positions and more interested in noticing patterns as they form. I’m more interested in shaping conditions than directing outcomes. Practices that once felt adjacent – improvisation, reflection, systems thinking, creative experimentation – now feel connected, although the language to explain that convergence is still incomplete.

I’ve also learned how long things take. How rarely insight arrives on demand, and how often it shows up through repetition, presence, or simply staying with something longer than planned.

What am I intentionally not doing this time?

I’m not trying to turn this into a portfolio, a platform, or a promise of regular output. I’m not optimising for relevance, reach, or completeness. I’m not waiting until something feels fully formed before sharing it.

Instead, I’m treating this space as a record of practice. A place to follow threads, test ideas, and let some things remain unresolved. Some posts may be short. Some experiments may go nowhere. This now feels like a feature, not a flaw.

This is less a return to blogging than a way of making space for work, for curiosity, for what emerges.

Onwards, gently.