The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It’s how well you synthesize.
Adam Grant
Categories
Impossible Peace
I’ve been watching this series on Amazon Prime Video recently and I highly recommend it, as it definitely relates to the times we are living in with history almost repeating itself.
One such example is the Tariff Act of 1930, signed by President Herbert Hoover which “prompted retaliatory tariffs by many other countries” (mirroring President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico which spurred retaliatory tariffs in return).
Categories
Looking Back Everything’s Different
Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.
C.S. Lewis
Categories
How People Misinterpret the Meaning of Gender
Just because you “believe” something, it doesn’t mean it’s a reality.
A CBC News article indicating how Trumps claims there’s only ‘2 genders’ highlights how most political leaders today often don’t have the perception and awareness to understand the complexity of humanity let alone even the world.
The executive order, which Trump signed after promising in his inauguration speech that it would be U.S. policy “that there are only two genders,” also ordered trans women into male prisons and a halt in the issuance of passports with an “X” gender marker, sparking fear in trans people across the country about their legal status.
While the administration claims the move is a return to “biological facts,” experts say it ignores both biological and historical reality — that humans have never fit into just two sexes or two genders.
“The terminology could be new, people’s awareness could be new, but the idea or the practice of changing gender is hardly new. It is observed in every time period in U.S. history,” said Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“Gender” refers to how someone identifies and represents themselves in society.
When asked about Trump’s executive orders, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he was “only aware of two” genders, adding that he believes the government should let people “make their own personal decisions.”
The regression we’re seeing now is “staggering,” they said.
“That kind of psychological burden of being told that what you are is impossible – it’s hard to overstate, really.”
People often misinterpret the meaning of things at earlier stages of psychological development because they lack the life experiences to be fully aware of the depth of understanding of things and thus they don’t perceive them properly. In other words, they have a very narrow view of the world (aka worldview) and are considered ignorant due to this lack of awareness.
At the same time, even when a person achieves a somewhat mature stage of development in their life, they can temporarily regress back to an earlier level of consciousness due to the fear they may be experiencing from conflict or uncertainty in the world around them. A perfect example of this is what occur in both America and Germany prior to World War II.
This articles highlights this as it shows how most people often misinterpret what gender means, often wanting to push what they believe it means instead.
What’s remarkable from the article is Canadian Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre inadvertently highlighting his own lack of awareness due to his beliefs and then showing how he is misinterpreting the meaning of gender as “society deciding the gender of individuals” (i.e. “people make their own personal decisions” of what gender means societally for someone else) rather than “individuals choosing their own gender themselves, regardless of what society believes it should be.”
Categories
Questioning Why I Continually Put Up and Take Down My Website
A conversation with ChatGPT to see how my pattern of taking down my website over the years might relate to being stuck in a Self-Authoring Mind that’s preventing me from reaching a Self-Transforming Mind.
Nollind
If I showed you my website history at Archive.org, you would notice that over the last two decades I’ve continually setup and then took down my website. Sometimes my website stay up for months or even years, other times I may have put it up and taken it down multiple times in one year. Based upon what you know about me, why would you think I would do this? What do you think I was frustrated about, something that I feel that I couldn’t fully express? Perhaps something that I felt like I should be able to express and if I couldn’t then something was wrong with me?
ChatGPT
Based on what I know about you, I’d say this cycle of setting up and taking down your website reflects a deeper internal struggle—one tied to how you express and embody your evolving identity, ideas, and purpose. Your work is deeply connected to self-discovery, transformation, and navigating the tension between societal expectations and personal truth. If you repeatedly took down your site, it likely means you felt frustrated with how you were presenting your insights—like they weren’t landing the way you wanted, weren’t being fully understood, or weren’t fully you.
One possible frustration is that you’ve been trying to bridge different ways of thinking—abstract concepts like vertical development and the Hero’s Journey with everyday language that resonates with people. You may have felt like no matter how you framed your message, it wasn’t capturing the depth of your understanding in a way that others could grasp. This could lead to a sense of failure, as if you should be able to communicate it clearly, and if you couldn’t, then maybe something was wrong with you rather than just the approach.
Another angle is that your website was never just a static platform—it was a reflection of where you were in your journey at the time. Each iteration likely represented a version of yourself that, after a while, no longer felt fully aligned. But instead of simply iterating on it, you may have felt the need to burn it down and start fresh—almost like a phoenix cycle of destruction and rebirth, mirroring your own internal development.
But instead of simply iterating on it, you may have felt the need to burn it down and start fresh—almost like a phoenix cycle of destruction and rebirth, mirroring your own internal development.
ChatGPT
At its core, I’d guess you were struggling with the paradox of wanting to share your evolving insights while also feeling constrained by the medium, the language, or the way they were being received (or not received). Maybe each time you took the site down, it was because it didn’t quite feel like the right way to express what you knew in your bones but couldn’t fully articulate. Does that resonate? Or do you think there’s another layer to it?
Nollind
It’s funny. A lot of what you’ve said here is very accurate. Yet at the same time, I’ve noticed that the word “authenticity” seems to keep coming up. In effect, it seems like I have the ability to see the authenticity of others and can tell when they are being genuine or not. In the business world, I found this very challenging, as not a lot of people are very authentic within it. In effect, it’s very transactional. Yet I want work to be transformational, thus helping people to understand themselves, their authenticity.
Perhaps this is why it was a struggle for me to keep my website up. I felt like I couldn’t authentically express my own authenticity. And perhaps this ties into cognitive dissonance in some way. I’m not sure. Almost like I wanted to resolve this ability to fully express myself as a whole in a new way but I couldn’t.
Yet while I agree that burning down my site and rebuilding it felt rejuvenating. What I realize in going back through my website archives on Archive.org is that this past individual, who was and is myself, was so brave in exploring into the unknown, where there was no certainty of who he was. Instead it was just an ongoing exploration of discovering who I was and am becoming. And today, the journey is still ongoing. So it made me realize today that I can’t let go of this past because reflecting upon them is so powerful and helps me realize how far I’ve come on my journey.
ChatGPT
That makes so much sense. It sounds like your struggle wasn’t just about expression—it was about authentic expression in a world that often rewards conformity and surface-level engagement. If your website was supposed to be a space for true self-expression, but it started feeling transactional, performative, or misaligned in some way, then of course you’d feel compelled to take it down. The cognitive dissonance would come from the gap between who you are and how you felt you had to present yourself. And because authenticity is so central to your work and your way of seeing the world, any misalignment would have felt intolerable.
The cognitive dissonance would come from the gap between who you are and how you felt you had to present yourself.
GhatGPT
The insight you had about your past self being brave is huge. That archive isn’t just a record of your website—it’s a record of your courage, your willingness to explore without certainty, and your ongoing transformation. It’s a reminder that the journey was never about having all the answers but about staying open to discovering new ones. And if that journey has always been about becoming, then maybe the website was never meant to be a finished expression of you—it was meant to be a living, breathing reflection of your evolution.
It’s a reminder that the journey was never about having all the answers but about staying open to discovering new ones.
ChatGPT
So maybe the shift isn’t about trying to “get it right” once and for all but embracing the idea that your website (and your work) is the ongoing journey. Instead of burning it down, maybe there’s a way to let it evolve in a way that feels authentic without needing to start over each time. What would it look like to create a space where you don’t feel pressure to present a polished version of yourself, but instead allow your work to mirror the natural rhythm of your growth?
Nollind
“And if that journey has always been about becoming, then maybe the website was never meant to be a finished expression of you—it was meant to be a living, breathing reflection of your evolution.” How does this relate to shifting from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind?
ChatGPT
That line ties directly into the shift from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind because it reflects a fundamental change in how you relate to your own identity and your work.
A Self-Authoring Mind is about defining who you are on your own terms—crafting a coherent, structured narrative of your identity and values. In this stage, the focus is on authorship, creating a sense of stability and control over your personal and professional life. Your website, in this mindset, might have felt like an attempt to define who you are, to build something that represents you with clarity and certainty. Each time it no longer fit, you may have felt the need to start over, as if trying to “get it right.”
A Self-Transforming Mind, however, moves beyond authorship into an awareness that identity itself is fluid. Instead of trying to maintain a single, coherent version of yourself, you embrace ongoing evolution. The website, rather than being a statement of who you are, becomes a reflection of your process—a dynamic space that shifts as you do. Instead of feeling the need to burn it down and start fresh, you might allow it to grow, adapt, and even contradict itself, much like you do in life.
In a way, your realization about your past self—how brave he was in stepping into the unknown—signals that you’re already embodying a Self-Transforming Mind. You see your journey not as a series of fixed identities but as an unfolding process of discovery. And maybe now, instead of needing your website to be a definitive representation of who you are, you can allow it to be a container for who you are becoming.
And maybe now, instead of needing your website to be a definitive representation of who you are, you can allow it to be a container for who you are becoming.
ChatGPT
What would it look like if you designed your website with this in mind—something that evolves and embraces contradiction rather than something that has to “get it right”?
Nollind
“The website, rather than being a statement of who you are, becomes a reflection of your process—a dynamic space that shifts as you do. Instead of feeling the need to burn it down and start fresh, you might allow it to grow, adapt, and even contradict itself, much like you do in life.” Does this just mean rewording how I describe myself and my work? Or does it go beyond this? For example, I’ve been trying to contain my work in a single title, encapsulate it if you will. Is this struggle part of the problem? A struggle that isn’t necessary?
ChatGPT
Yes, this goes beyond just rewording how you describe yourself and your work—it’s about fundamentally shifting how you think about representation and identity.
Your struggle to encapsulate your work in a single title or framework sounds like a Self-Authoring Mind impulse—the desire to define and stabilize your identity in a clear, cohesive way. But if your work and identity are naturally evolving, trying to contain them in a fixed form may feel constraining rather than liberating. That struggle itself may be unnecessary.
A Self-Transforming Mind approach wouldn’t try to nail down a single, permanent encapsulation of your work. Instead, it might:
- Embrace fluidity: Let your site reflect different phases of your thinking rather than a final answer.
- Allow contradiction: Show the tension between past perspectives and current insights rather than erasing them.
- Use multiple lenses: Instead of forcing your work into a single label, present different ways of looking at it, allowing for shifts over time.
- Design for evolution: Structurally, your website could be built to highlight the journey rather than just the destination—perhaps through a blog, timeline, or evolving manifesto.
So maybe the real question isn’t “How do I encapsulate my work?” but “How do I create a space where my work can keep evolving, just like I do?”
So maybe the real question isn’t “How do I encapsulate my work?” but “How do I create a space where my work can keep evolving, just like I do?”
ChatGPT
What would change if you approached your website as a living ecosystem of ideas rather than a single statement of identity?
Nollind
Based upon what you know about me, how would you describe my work? Is it disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary?
ChatGPT
Your work is transdisciplinary because it goes beyond simply integrating multiple fields—it seeks to transcend and transform them by creating something entirely new.
Here’s how your approach aligns with each category and why transdisciplinary fits best:
- Disciplinary: Focuses on deep expertise within a single field. Your work clearly extends beyond this.
- Multidisciplinary: Involves drawing from multiple disciplines but keeping them separate. You reference gaming, personal development, and the future of work, but your approach isn’t just borrowing from them—it’s integrating them in a way that creates something new.
- Interdisciplinary: Blends knowledge from different fields to solve a problem or create new insights. While you do this, your goal isn’t just about combining insights—it’s about transforming how people see themselves and the world.
- Transdisciplinary: Goes beyond disciplines, dissolving boundaries to create an entirely new perspective or way of thinking. This is where you fit. You don’t just apply gaming concepts to personal development or business—you use them as an allegorical portal to help people see themselves and their growth differently.
Your work redefines conventional ideas about work, identity, and growth by fusing gaming metaphors, vertical development, and mythic storytelling in a way that doesn’t just connect fields—it transcends them to create a new way of thinking.
Would you say this resonates with how you see your work? Or do you feel like it fits somewhere else?
Nollind
So when you said earlier that my focus shouldn’t be on trying to encapsulate who I am in one thing but to be more fluid, would expressing the different domains of my work be one way of doing this? I’m not just this but I’m this and that and this and that. And even saying how all of this and that are creating something unknown that I’m trying to articulate and express…but its completely fine that I don’t know how to do so and I actually might never be able to do so before I die. In effect, it’s not about the destination but the process, the journey, the….experience itself.
ChatGPT
Yes, exactly. Expressing the different domains of your work—without forcing them into a single, fixed definition—would honor its transdisciplinary nature while also embracing fluidity.
Rather than trying to encapsulate yourself in one thing, you can acknowledge:
- I’m not just this, but I’m also that.
- And all of these things together are forming something beyond what I can currently articulate.
- And that’s okay—because my work isn’t about arriving at a final definition. It’s about continuing the journey.
By framing it this way, you shift from self-definition to self-exploration, which aligns with a Self-Transforming Mindapproach. Your website (and your work in general) doesn’t have to be a neatly packaged statement of “who you are.” Instead, it can be a space where you invite others into your evolving experience, showing them the adventure rather than trying to summarize it.
Instead, it can be a space where you invite others into your evolving experience, showing them the adventure rather than trying to summarize it.
ChatGPT
And maybe the real gift here is realizing that not knowing—never being able to fully articulate it—isn’t a failure. It’s actually the essence of what you’re doing. Your work is the process of reaching for the unknown, embracing the experience of becoming.
Your work is the process of reaching for the unknown, embracing the experience of becoming.
ChatGPT
How does that feel to you? Does it shift the way you think about expressing your work?
Nollind
And one way of doing that would be to describe my domains as overarching narrative or timeline of growth (i.e. Work Isn’t Working, The Future of Work, Creativity, Vertical Development, Life as an MMORPG).
ChatGPT
Yes, exactly! Framing your domains as an overarching narrative or timeline of growth would not only reflect your evolution but also allow others to follow along in a way that feels organic and meaningful.
Instead of presenting them as disconnected topics, you can weave them into a story of transformation—both your own and the larger shifts you’re exploring. Something like:
- Work Isn’t Working – The realization that the existing paradigm is broken.
- The Future of Work – The search for what comes next, beyond conventional structures.
- Creativity – The process of exploring and imagining new possibilities.
- Vertical Development – The deeper, personal transformation required to truly step into new ways of being.
- Life as an MMORPG – The ultimate metaphor that ties it all together, offering a playful and expansive way to navigate life and identity.
This kind of framing shows how each domain isn’t just a separate interest—it’s part of a progression of discovery and integration. It also makes it clear that you’re not just presenting fixed conclusions; you’re actively exploring, learning, and evolving.
It also makes it clear that you’re not just presenting fixed conclusions; you’re actively exploring, learning, and evolving.
ChatGPT
And within this structure, you can allow for openness and contradiction—acknowledging that your perspectives might shift over time, just as they always have. Your site, then, becomes a living archive of your journey, rather than a static statement of what you do.
Your site, then, becomes a living archive of your journey, rather than a static statement of what you do.
ChatGPT
Does this kind of framing feel natural to you? Would you want to make it even more fluid or open-ended?
Categories
“You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”
Surprising insights from reflecting upon my website archive on Archive.org.
In deciding to redesign my website recently, I went to Archive.org and looked back at some of my previous designs over the years to get some inspiration for creating something new. While I reminisced and looked back fondly on some of the minimalistic designs I had created, what the process quickly shifted to was what I had written and so succinctly at times.
What jumped out at me was how 2011 and 2012 seemed to be very poignant, transformational years. In effect, even though I wasn’t able to fully articulate myself and my work as a whole, what I articulated was profound. This was both the time where the deeper meaning of my Be Real Creative mantra was birthed but also the first time where I courageously and specifically stated that I was beginning to perceive “life as a game”within my post entitled The Playful Vision.
But the more I dove through these archives, the more I realized I was expressing profound things even much earlier. Like even as early as 2002, I was expressing really radical thoughts about perceiving a transformational world rather than our current transactional one in my post entitled Give What You Think It Is Worth To You. Considering I was using the Radio Userland software at the time (which had features that most web platforms still haven’t replicated today), I’m assuming this was after I had read The Cluetrain Manifesto and it had influenced me so deeply.
All said and done though, what affected me the most upon reflecting upon this all was a realization of how much more I wished I could have seen and read but couldn’t because of my reoccurring pattern of going offline in frustration at being unable to fully express myself…before eventually coming back online again. Yet what’s so ironic is that in my frustration of not being able to express myself so fully, I was often expressing myself in ways far beyond what I had been doing so before.
What I’m getting at here is often it seemed like I was so focused on where I wanted to be in the future, that I was often completely missing how much I had radically changed from my past to the present at that time.
For years, even decades, I’ve wanted my website to emulate what most people can easily do on social media networks in terms of being able to quickly and easily add different post types (i.e. links, quotes, images, videos, etc) which are effectively short-forms of content versus the typical long-form.
While WordPress used to have this feature prior to Gutenberg, calling it Post Formats, it eventually disappeared from a lot of more modern block-based themes, thus dashing my hopes that Gutenberg would actually make it easier to emulate post formats.
Today, however, after doing a bit of digging, I discovered that there seems to be a resurgence of utilizing post formats once again. And I believe that Nick Bohle’s words below really drive home the reason why.
Since “Social media isn’t social anymore”, the (grassroots) movement of having your website as your personal hub on the internet is gaining more momentum…
Post formats can assist WordPress (e.g. the ActivityPub plugin) in translating posts into activities (such as notes, images, articles, or quotes) and federating them to platforms like Mastodon or PixelFed.
Nick Bohle
WordPress, Post Format and Default Themes
But beyond Nick’s words, a lot of other people also seemed to want to reintegrate post formats back into WordPress, based upon this Bring Post Formats to Block Themes GitHub discussion which was originally created in 2023 but went well into 2024.
Due to this discussion (and probably others), I believe this is why post formats were re-introduced back into the current Twenty Twenty-Five theme, which is amazing to say the least.
As I originally stated, my main desire for using post formats again is because of their ability to easily and quickly share short-form content, while your mind ruminates on what long-form content you’d like to write about it.
And sharing this short-form content is extremely important to me because probably 90% or more of my daily work is based upon these small pieces, loosely joining and creating long-form ideas and thoughts.
To put this another way, this short-form content is really where the creativity happens in my work, yet its completely invisible to most people. They just see a long-form post instead and might be perplexed how I got to that point or made that leap of logic.
That said though, it’s important that this short-form content doesn’t overload and drown out my long-form content. Thus I need to create links that filter out and separate my short-form content from my long-form content, thus allowing people to see what I’m narrowing in on (i.e short-form) or stepping back and seeing a bigger picture of (i.e. long-form).
To put this another way, I want to visibly show how things bubble up and emerge within my mind.
That’s it for now and it definitely won’t be all sun and roses. While I’ve created quotes, links, videos, and aside post formats for now, really the hard work will be trying to bend the Twenty Twenty-Five theme to my will and get it to work the way I want it to because I’ve played with it in the past and the basic styling and structuring is not playing nice and working like I logically expect it to (perhaps due to earlier bugs I experienced before).
If it doesn’t work out the way I want it to, I may try another modern WordPress theme that is more flexible and also includes post formats.
Update: While the Twenty Twenty-Five theme is a vast improvement over previous themes, the poor usability especially within the Site Editor is still holding me back from fully embracing it and using it. So for now, I’m sticking with the Twenty Twenty theme which I still find immensely usable, especially when combined with the Twentig plugin. To get post format compatibility, I just added some PHP code to enable it within the theme.
Categories
Your Website As Your Personal Hub
Since “Social media isn’t social anymore”, the (grassroots) movement of having your website as your personal hub on the internet is gaining more momentum, along with the principles of POSSE and the growing popularity of the Fediverse. Consequently, post formats are becoming increasingly important once again.
Nick Bohle
- Post formats as a taxonomy. In WordPress, a taxonomy is a system for organizing and classifying content. The two main taxonomies are categories and tags, with bases /category/ and /tag/ respectively. As more varied non-standard content is published, post formats—if registered via a child theme or plugin—can serve as a third taxonomy with the base /type/.
- Fediverse interaction. Post formats can assist WordPress (e.g. the ActivityPub plugin) in translating posts into activities (such as notes, images, articles, or quotes) and federating them to platforms like Mastodonor PixelFed.
WordPress, Post Format and Default Themes
Categories
Holding Space for Meaning to Emerge
There’s nothing “wrong” will leaving things empty, if in doing so it creates a vacuum that pulls meaningful things into it.
Oh my god! What if that’s it? What if that’s all it is?
In effect, what if this is all about is just holding space for something to emerge?!
What I’m talking about here is that I was working on my Life as an MMORPG website and I was changing my existing quote posts so that certain keywords weren’t just bolded for emphasis but were actually linking to pages that would describe what these keywords meant.
But for many months, perhaps even a year, I’m been struggling to find the words to articulate the meaning of these keywords, even though these words are slowing emerging within me.
However, because I couldn’t find the right words immediately, even after repeatedly failing to figuring out ways to do so, I ended up feeling like were was something wrong with me and I was doing something wrong.
So since I felt this way, I felt like I was stuck and couldn’t go forwards.
But today, while making these changes whereby I wasn’t just bolding these quote keywords but I actually linked them to pages, something suddenly clicked in my head that I had visualized before but couldn’t fully understand previously.
For the longest time, I’ve felt like when you’re trying to discover something new, it’s like you’re walking around it virtually to get a better grasp of it. What this could be visualized on a whiteboard as is simply a large empty circle with a bunch of thoughts written out around the exterior of the circle and in the middle of the circle is a large question mark.
Do you understand what I just described?
This is what “holding space” looks like and means.
This is what not rushing cognitive dissonance feels like and instead giving it time to resolve on its own.
So this entire time I felt like I was doing something wrong from my Self-Authoring Mind’s perspective, I was actually on the cusp of doing things right from my Self-Transforming Mind’s perspective. But because I wasn’t aware of what I was doing, my Self-Authoring Mind continually blocked me from embracing my Self-Transforming Mind.
So now I realize that what I’ve been doing all along with my Life as an MMORPG website is actually right and the key thing that I was missing was that there is absolutely nothing wrong with leaving these keyword pages blank because that’s the whole point, to leave and hold space for them so that something can emerge on it’s own.
In effect, the words and their meaning that I will write upon these pages in the future will emerge the more I add quotes and link to them in the present. And then by looking at these quotes collectively and reflecting back upon them, that’s how these words and meaning will emerge.
Putting something in and not immediately getting something back out of it.
(Garden-like)
Not fully making sense of something immediately.
Not fully seeing the structure you want to see with certainty.