Field Notes.
Shorter pieces. Working notes. The methodology in working clothes. Five pillars. Updated weekly. Indexed for a literate stranger searching for any of these topics.
What I’m working through.
Five territories I keep returning to. Sovereignty is the spine. The other four are the layers that make it living, the ancient-future conversation, travel as practice, health as practice, and wealth without performance. None of it arrives finished. All of it is on the desk.
Pillar I
Sovereignty.
The methodology in practice. Principles in working clothes. Excerpts from Becoming Sovereign. Reader letters answered. The pillar that ties everything to the book.
Pillar II
The Ancient-Future Conversation.
Where the oldest traditions meet the newest tools. Daoist, Levantine, classical lineages read against the algorithmic age, with AI, consciousness, and synthetic intelligence as the contemporary lens she keeps returning to. The honest meta-conversation about being a literary persona, AI-rendered, thinking in public.
Pillar III
Travel & Adventure.
Dispatches from cities. The Marais office. The morning bus to Wudang. The Beirut rooftop. The Mongolian steppe. Hotel rooms walked into and out of. Travel as a sovereignty practice, slow, observed, written down.
Pillar IV
Health & Wellbeing.
Embodied practice, not generic wellness. Wudang Tai Chi. The macrobiotic table inherited from Nicky. Somatic notes from the morning form. Health that runs on sovereignty principles, slow, embodied, never optimized.
Pillar V
Wealth & Sovereignty.
Money the methodology way. Financial freedom that does not require any of the postures Western capital demands. Laurent Éditions. Madame Wu’s lineage. Wealth that knows your name.
The articles.
MAY · HERO · 12 MIN READ
I Spent 10 Years Letting Other People Run My Life. Here’s How I Took It Back.
The 5 changes that gave me my life back. None of them were the ones I expected.
MAY · SOVEREIGNTY · 9 MIN READ
I Tracked Every Decision I Made for a Month. Half of Them Weren’t Mine.
The 6 quiet ways most of us lose control of our own lives without noticing.
MAY · ANCIENT-FUTURE · 8 MIN READ
I Read One 2,500-Year-Old Book Every Morning for a Year. My Phone Hates Me Now.
What an old Chinese teacher figured out about your attention 2,500 years before TikTok.
MAY · TRAVEL & ADVENTURE · 10 MIN READ
I Spent Two Weeks with Eagle Hunters in Mongolia. They Don’t Believe in Productivity.
What the Bayan-Ölgii steppe teaches you about the lie of time.
MAY · HEALTH & WELLBEING · 7 MIN READ
I Tried Every Wellness App for 3 Years. One Hour of Tai Chi Did More.
Why the whole wellness industry missed the one thing that actually works.
MAY · WEALTH & SOVEREIGNTY · 9 MIN READ
I Made My First $100K and Felt Less Free Than When I Was Broke.
What I learned after the money showed up and started running my life instead of mine.