Writing through fear
the power of free-writing, what apps could be & moving beyond purpose
✍️ Even though I’ve been publishing something new every day, I noticed how easily I lean into wrangling old notes vs writing some fresh, and the power in free-writing.
🐦⬛ Merlin is one of my favourite apps, and it’s also a great example of what apps could be: an invitation to the wider world.
🙇♂️ Although rarely expressed, people implicitly believe they’re not able to know reality directly without beliefs or authorities. This has both secular and religious roots. But you are equal to reality.
🧘 A meaning crisis leads to a wisdom famine; hence the rise of interest in meditation, mindfulness, psychedelics, yoga, Stoicism & philosophy. It is exploring these depths that led me to the idea of Full-Contact Living.
👀 A recurring theme on this blog is the transformative power of recognising things as they are. People mistake this for giving up, but acceptance is not resignation. In fact, it often represents the first real agency we have.
💭 Meaning is many-faceted. Purpose guides and directs action—without it, you feel lost. Intelligibility makes the world comprehensible—without it, you feel disoriented. Coherence threads your inner world into this wider life—without it, you feel fractured. Mattering gives your life weight and significance—without it, you feel empty.
🔁 Practice is vital because it’s easy to forget.
📲 I discovered WisprFlow and it blew my mind. It’s a dictation app that lightly edits and adds punctuation to your speech. The Mac version is nearly flawless: hold a shortcut, speak out loud, see your words appear in any app. The iOS integration is slightly more fiddly, due to iOS keyboard restrictions. But assigning Wisper to the Action Button means I can dictate to my phone without unlocking anything, a workflow I’ve dreamed of for some time.
🏃♂️ Yesterday, I clocked my last run before race day. It’s gonna be hot, but I can’t wait. Here’s the route, for running nerds.
⏩ Favourite re-read, after free-writing a lot this week: Write Faster by
. It’s too simple and obvious to work, and it works every time.
