The Bottle
2026-04-17
Today's post is a submission to the IndieWeb Carnival, a monthly event where folks on the IndieWeb write a blog post dedicated to a theme hosted by one of the members. This month's theme is "Adventure" and is hosted by Pablo Morales.
When I think of adventure, the time in my life that immediately comes to mind is when I lived in Austin, Texas from 2016–2022. I was a student at the University of Texas, and while burnt out from my time in high school, I was excited and at many times overwhelmed to be in such a new and interesting city. I grew up in the Dallas area, so there were tons of similarities between the two places, but Austin had a certain vibe that Dallas didn't. Dallas is a huge urban area, and when you add up all the people in the metro area, it's the fourth largest in the United States—just behind NYC, LA, and Chicago. On top of that, Dallas has been growing like crazy and will soon take Chicago's spot in the next few years.
Austin is a big city too, but when compared to Dallas, it's quite small. It's smaller in terms of population, but also more geographically compact as well. Because of this, it was an easier venture for its planners to make its traffic infrastructure more accommodating to cyclists. By America's standards, it's one of our country's most bike-friendly cities. I remember when I first arrived and started classes, I linked up with an old buddy from high school who was a few years older than me and had been living down there for a few years already. He told me he was doing delivery work for the food delivery apps, which were just starting to emerge at the time. He told me that he made these deliveries—on his bike.
I thought that sounded like a cool way to work and make some money, and I fell in love instantly. Riding around the city was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. I went through so many bikes because I kept destroying them in accidents or getting them stolen. But throughout most of my time in Austin, I pulsed through it with my tires on the road. I barely drove my car. My bike became my life, and I knew that no matter what would happen, I could put it all out on the streets and let that energy rush through me.
There was always something interesting going on in the city—tons of nightlife, and even more traffic to weave my way through. When working on my bike, I learned not just how to navigate the city, but to optimize that navigation and get anywhere fast. Austin is in Texas Hill Country, so figuring out how to reduce climbing was essential, especially when I would be working 12–14 hours a day. It was amazing; I could eat anything I wanted because of the thousands of calories I was burning every day; I was fitter than I ever thought I'd be, and getting out there every day to see new people and things was a fulfilling life, to say the least.
That sense of adventure began to erode over the years, though. It felt like I had played a game and got all the achievements. The sandbox didn't feel so open anymore. Then when Covid happened and the world stood still for over two years, it made me reconsider my whole life, who I was, and what I wanted to do. I had told myself that if I woke up one day, turned thirty, and found myself in the same place doing the same things, then I had failed myself. It was so strange because I could've kept going and pushed through, but there was something deeper inside me that was pushing me to leave the city. I didn't understand the motivations of that thing, but I was receiving the signals, and I had to act.
Adventure is a funny thing because the most important aspect of an endeavor feeling adventurous lies mostly in its novelty. Humans crave novelty, at many times to a fault. I would say that comparing my life in Austin to my life today, there isn't as much novelty. I'm fine with it. I've started to find comfort in the mundane. More than that, I've garnered a greater sense of novelty from looking inward. Cogito is a project that puts me in a position to constantly seek novelty through documenting my thoughts on a daily basis, and many times that novelty isn't something that happens to me, but something I have to create from the inside.
Novelty is a matter of perspective.
These days I look at the outside world and find myself less impressed with it. New restaurants, hot concerts, large crowded festivities, and the general hustle-and-bustle of it all overwhelms me. I am content with a low-volume and understated existence; that's been a pocket I've always found myself most comfortable in. Many love to fascinate themselves with finding more things to do, but I've found myself more fascinated with finding less to do. When I was younger, I had this deep desire to be some sort of polymath or Renaissance Man, but I've found that in today's day and age, the sheer amount of information we contend with makes interdisciplinary people less than optimal for how we run the world.
I lost that fervor, but in its ashes I've found the true vocation I was always looking for.
Crafting a rich internal world and being able to invite anyone who wishes to see it is a pursuit that can be isolating, but has been rewarding in ways I couldn't even have begun to expect. I realized that all of those feelings and impulses I have constantly bottled up inside me—they are my will and spirit, extrasensory forces that allow me to be an agent of change in the world through channels that carry an immense weight to them; many don't realize just how powerful they really are.
On this day, I look at my life and feel proud of its mundanity and slowness. I feel so fortunate that I am in such a peaceful world and have the economic opportunity to read and write all day. I can sometimes grow dissatisfied with this pursuit I've decided for myself, but I've learned that God gives us what we need, and not what we want. In this season of life, that thing seems to be an active slowness and building toward a creation that can feel like tossing a new message in a bottle every day.
Some days I'll be the messenger, but there's plenty of days to be the bottle.
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