E5: Well, This Was Surprising; S15: Exactly what I've been trying and trying to say... and I've finally said it.

I made this while walking home.That is becoming a fairly unremarkable sentence for me to write, which may itself be part of the problem.This one started in one place, moved through several others, and eventually seemed to arrive somewhere I had not known I was going.There is strategic planning in here. Fort Knox. Masculinity. Naloxone. Fentanyl. Benzodiazepines. Caffeine. Medical Assistance in Dying. Sensitivity. The possibility that some people can withstand more chaos than others. The possibility that this fact is neither a compliment nor an injury.There is also a song called “I’m Fucked,” which probably tells you something about the general level of confidence with which I approached the material.But underneath all of that, I think I may have been circling something much simpler.What happens when somebody is doing something because they want to experience doing it, and other people—often very kindly—begin turning it into a project?A direction.A career.A strategy.A thing that should grow.Something that needs an audience, a plan, a destination, a better version of itself.I understand why people do this. It is one of the ways we recognize value. If something seems good, we want to help it become more good. If someone appears capable of something, we want to know what they are going to do with it.But what if the doing is already the thing?What if there is no next level?What if the fact that something exists today does not obligate it to become larger tomorrow?I don’t think this episode argues against ambition, planning, development or improvement. I am not sure it argues against anything.It may simply be me noticing, again, how quickly experience gets converted into trajectory.And how strangely difficult it can be to say:No, really.I am doing this because I am doing it.That may be enough.The episode eventually ends up with “North Is Still North.”Which, now that I think about it, may be the closest thing it has to a conclusion.You can move.You can turn around.You can get lost.You can decide you were going somewhere else entirely.North does not need your strategic plan.