BLOG
Introduction
1. Gardening Zen
2. Holding Course
3. Mayday, Mayday
Conclusion
Introduction
It’s strange how things can feel both expansive and compressed at the same time. Everything seems open, with new tools, new possibilities — entire categories of work unfolding almost weekly. But there’s a tension that comes with it too, a kind of quickening. The air has thickened.
This planter box had grown imbalanced with the ice plant on the left taking up all of the root space and thriving, to the detriment of the other plants which had comparatively less water. The soil is compacted and many of the sedum are leggy.
1. Gardening Zen
Lately, I’ve been taking breaks from the computer and work by escaping to my roof deck and garden. I’ve been overhauling a bunch of my plants, tearing apart old plantings, isolating specimens and replanting with fresh new soil. Last weekend, I pulled apart a couple of planters that had been sitting untouched for too long. At a glance, they looked ok. Some parts even looked robust and healthy. But overall, they were imbalanced and misshapen.
Once I dug in, it was obvious how compacted everything had become. Desiccated soil enclosing overgrown roots, circling themselves, locked into a structure that could no longer support healthy growth. Small, isolated pockets of hard growth were fighting for space, choked by neglect and overextension.
This got me thinking that maybe way forward is actually to dismantle stuff and rebuild it from scratch with updated information, not tweak it in place. Fully uproot it, shake the soil loose, break up dead or compacted roots. Then, replant it with intention and better conditions. And see what grows back, shaping it from there. The chaos of this industry-wide disruption started to make a bit of sense.
When everything is uprooted and exposed, piles of dirt being broken up and sifted, sorted into bins of leftover soil, gravel, lava rock, dried leaves, roots, and organic matter, what used to feel complete now appears fragmented and chaotic. It looks worse before it looks better.
Without having a plan, or knowing where it’s all going, it could read damage. But it isn’t. It’s evidence of a system that had outgrown its container. Letting things evolve often requires breaking the structure that had been holding it in place, then reassembling it with new awareness, better infrastructure and a clearer sense of how it should grow.
There's a clarity in gardening that abstraction can't replicate. It’s obvious when something is overgrown. It’s plain to see when the soil has locked up. Plants respond to attention directly.
The captain and crew of this vessel sail from New Zealand to Patagonia, with a stop in Antarctica along the way.
2. Holding Course
Around the same time, my brother recommended a video on YouTube about a crew moving between New Zealand and Patagonia by way of Antarctica. The conditions were relentless. Cold, unstable, constantly shifting.
The captain kept going. Adjusting course. Fixing what broke. Keeping things aligned without losing sight of where they were headed. Maintaining an even keel. There was a quiet authority in his actions, a confidence like he'd been there before and knew how to get through it.
It's one thing to evaluate from inside an ideal working environment, when one’s role and the demands on judgment are clear. It's another to sit with it amongst the broader system swirling around it — not just the output, but all of the decisions that shape it, the context it lives in and the ways it connects to everything else.
