Have you seen Project Hail Mary yet? Dr. Ryland Grace’s experience strikes me as a powerful metaphor for an overlooked aspect of the creative journey: the aloneness.
Aloneness is distinct from loneliness, which is a feeling we can experience even surrounded by others.
Living an intentional life (by which I mean one where you choose to be guided by your inner-self, rather than the cues, conventions and expectations of the outer world) is, almost by definition, going to involve separating from the pack, hacking a fresh path through lands unknown.
And at some point, you find you have wandered further than you realised. You’ve never been closer to yourself or more free, but now you are untethered.
Like Ryland Grace, you find yourself drifting through the void.
And you start to wonder: ‘is there anywhere I really belong?’
I’ve spent a lot of June reflecting on and understanding my own lack of belonging. I’ve chased it all my life, constructing elaborate fantasies to feel like I’m part of something; all in service of soothing a wound that now demands to be healed.
The choices I’ve made this year have set me on a path away from people, and it’s work no-one can do with me.
But, but, but: my life now is more full of magic and mystery and beauty than it has been before.
I’m alone up here, but what a view.
New Work, June 2026
A new (weird?) piece of music
These feelings I’ve just described came out of me this month as music. It started with some chords and a melody which just crystallised the emotion in a way I couldn’t find in anything else.
As I played the music to myself, I heard a voice: almost like the gentle narrator of a long-lost children’s book, recorded on an old cassette reel. He reads a story that is archetypal, fantastical, mythological. Once I started, it seemed to flow out as if it had already been written.
I don’t really know how to describe what I’ve ended up with. Is it a story? Is it a song? You’ll have to decide.
Two new videos
This video’s a departure from my usual format: a media criticism video essay. I wanted to talk about the unintended impact of YouTube’s notorious algorithm on wider culture. I believe YouTube is where mainstream culture will source the next generation of ideas, stories and talent and, the algorithm being shaped the way it is, this is bad for all of us.
And in this video I share a really powerful exercise that will reveal whether your nervous system is quietly limiting how successful you can be. Realising that I have been sabotaging my dreams for decades has been one of the most profound revelations I’ve had this year.
Postcards update
Thanks to all of you who got in touch with interesting ideas and questions for last month’s postcard experiment! I wish I could have responded to all of them but I only had three cards, which are currently making their way to three different continents!
Look out for the next newsletter on or around July 26th!
Until another Sunday soon,
