I'm running again.
Not away, but towards.
I find myself at a train station by the sea. A dead end, really. No other place to go but into my own mind.
An old Japanese man is my only companion. We sit side by side. Our trousers don’t match. There’s a little space between us, but the baggy folds of our garments want to hold hands — Blue on Green. Enough space for eight people on this bench, and yet we’ve chosen to share the world together, just for now.
He places his hands on his knees, shoulder-width apart, as he waits for the train. I hear the waves crawl up the pier and crash against the rocks, as if they too are waiting.
This station is merely a platform: concrete paved, bordered in dark wood. The cracks invite weeds to join us, small passengers in their own right. The rain joins us lightly. There is no roof. The track is a single line, laid just a few feet away — close to the edge of the earth. The train is never late.
Paper tickets, of course.
I see the silence between the sea and our bench as both grace and no-man’s land. The wind caresses the man’s eyebrows, but he remains slightly slouched, unmoving. Meanwhile, my thoughts wander into the past. Three years of trying to build a product into a company out of sheer will. Risking parts of life in pursuit of more — whatever that means.
Hosting sponsored events in New York City.
Fucking New York City.
Standing in line at JFK, rehearsing answers — never sure if I’d be called to the back room.
Learning, performing, surviving - San Francisco. The Loins.
Anecdotes at silly social events; “I make things and get money.”.
Angles of life and how to be that evolve into entire dimensions of pressure.
Searching for peace in the pauses.
I wonder if this finely aged neighbor beside me, with his glasses glistening like the sea, feels that pressure too.
He’s probably just waiting for the train.
I’ve danced this tango of my reality for three years:
The hyper-productive founding engineer. The fighter — for a better world, a better me, for more impact. More skills, better physique, insightful solutions. But the real target felt somewhere beyond all that.
Then the dewdrop1 falls. And through that lens, life feels clearer again — drawing me back to the soil, and the sea. There’s dissonance in chasing mechanical greatness, when life — real life — is messy and harmonic and full of grace. That dissonance has become an overtone I now wish to play.
It feels timely. Rooted. As if something in the soul of this era is crying out not for progress, but for freedom. So I yearn with it. Wanting to create things just to create. For things that free us, rather than aim us. Tools that breathe.
Through the lens of the dewdrop, life mutates — arbitrarily, harmonically. And still we try to control the story. We fixate on growth, dominion, speed. But it seems to me that it’s in witnessing change, not mastering it, that color enters our lives. That’s where becoming happens.
Hearing “How I got to $X million ARR2 in Y days” feels like a far cry from peace. But watching a man’s leathered fingers rise and fall — tapping his heel against the concrete — that feels like truth. It echoes an isochronic tone3 I can follow.
I think back to the moments that catalyzed my becoming.
Not the headlines or decks — the small moments. Challenge. Laughter. Confusion. Alignment.
Moments of "I see you for who you are, and I'm right here."
I remember our first payment at Streamline. $100. We were so young.
We drove two hours to Stinson Beach just to breathe in the spring air and laugh in the water.
Doug splashing around. Helena sat above us, marinating in the California solstice.
That moment mattered. Not because of the money. But because time slowed down. We reunited with the soil and meaning returned. We remembered why we were.
So now I wonder: how do I 'be' next?
Build a new company?
Take a walk? Make it a rally?
Free Palestine. Fight climate change. Show up. Take a breath, meditate. But don't take too long a break. Be a good friend. Make Rent. That apartment looks nice. How's the war in Ukraine? What about Taiwan? My visa just got declined, and others got deported. Wait, did I miss something - why is there a mural?
I carry all of this. Probably not alone.
And still... I want to move forward.
The world aches in so many places at once. There are so many angles from which one might become — but they seem to crowd the path itself.
I see the world burning... But maybe that’s okay.
Not in a passive way — not in surrender — but in that small, human "yes" in the middle of "what the fuck".
I’m trying to find that place. Not to escape the fire — but to move with it. To make something gentler in its glow. I don’t have the answers. But I think it's somewhere in becoming.
I want to craft experiences that whisper to our souls.
That help us slow down — just long enough to feel everything. The way my socks warm my toes. The slowing dryness of my lips, fighting against the wind. It’s all there.
Not for anything more. Just to remind us what is already ours — this dewdrop world.
I want to make things that make the silence feel safer. That bring us back to ourselves. That reconcile us with the air... and with the person waiting beside us for the same train. Because we’ll both have to leave this station soon enough. So we may as well share the bench together — for a second.
1 This dewdrop world - Kobayashi Issa
2 ARR: Annual Recurring Revenue
3 Isochronic tones: A single tone, pulsing at regular intervals, often used for meditation or entrainment.