“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” – John Stuart Mill

I had a nascent grasp of this idea when I wrote my evergreen content forest essay years ago, that I’ve since rewritten and is still published in some form. That’s what my goal with reading has become lately, is helping me feed these roots that just never quite dug deep enough to find the better soil.

From my mindset at the time, which was 2017, the evergreen forest [of content] idea I had was actually not for utility specifically, but more about looking at the long game of having a [bunch] of ‘long-tail’ search terms that would make my content valuable indefinitely. So, yes, it was about SEO, but not really about the metrics in a narrow timeframe. And looking back I had very few essays that felt ‘alive’ to be honest. 

Gemini mentioned the ‘acceptance of asymmetry’ when it comes to parsing ideas that we have that we want to write about. As I’ve mused about multiple times since, these ‘asymmetric’ ideas sometimes are more related than they first appear if you turn them the right way around. 

…

“Information abundance is a modern miracle but it’s also an impediment to agency. And it happens to be much more fun and freeing to be out in the world just doing stuff, stumping around and humming merrily, expanding my zone of competence, than sitting inside on a screen watching someone else do stuff. Knowledge is rarely the bottleneck. To start almost anything, you need to know nearly nothing.” 

I have a lot to say about this quote from the essay “Do What You Can’t” by Tommy Dixon. (https://www.tommydixon.ca/p/do-what-you-cant.) 

I call this issue the ‘pitfalls of information abundance.’ I’ve always valued hands-on work, and I did a lot of it in my twenties, but as I got into my thirties, I started becoming what has often been termed a ‘knowledge worker’ which is a role that AI has made muddier than ever. In fact, I’d say my vast stores of knowledge within my skull has become a certain disadvantage. I have to spend so much time now UNLEARNING how I view content both as a product and a service because it’s what served to pay my bills for many years. Now since it’s no longer necessary for me to write for a living, I’m now writing to fill in the gaps in my understanding, which seem to grow wider every day! 

… I always was an explorer until I got into the dredges of SEO and thought that rewiring my thought process to always be writing to the keyword and to the imaginary audience I thought would read my work would be my key to success. It did help others achieve success, but it was hollow and personally got me undervalued and with an unfulfilling ‘knowledge work’ career that left me facing no employment except cashiering and stocking shelves, a waste of my intellectual abilities. Some would argue, though, that taking such ‘crappy’ jobs is actually good for you cognitively because you’re working with your hands with repetitive tasks which gives your brain to process more of the deep thinking stuff you do subconsciously. 

Discussing this with Gemini, the LLM presented competence as being somatic, and this was actually a surprisingly cogent and relevant insight. I will say, the more physical aspects of my marketing career were important rests for my attention that would lead to some of my best ideas down the road. But now that I’m physically hobbled by my autism, chronic fatigue, nerve issues, and other neurological problems, I have all the time in the world to overthink everything. Even playing my favorite video games [which I’ve abandoned almost entirely in 2026] I find myself trying to extract every ounce of value I can from my time spent on them.