I haven't sent an email in over a year.
Most people would apologize for that. I won’t. I spent that year looking for something real. I was tired of "thinking by accident". I was tired of being a reaction to the world.
During this time, I asked myself a question that changed everything: What actually separates us from AI?
The Meat Algorithm
Most conversations we have (online or in person) look just like AI. We toss around quotes and ideas we’ve heard elsewhere. We repeat things to fit in. We repeat things to feel smart. But these words never touch our "own flesh". There is no risk. It is just an algorithm made of meat.
The Blade in the Flesh
True thinking is different. It is a physical process. I call it: The Blade in the Flesh.
It begins with Painful Novelty. This is the moment the blade hits. It’s the shock you feel when you realize you’ve been regurgitating a lie. It is the pain of realizing you’ve been wrong for ten years.
An AI does not feel that “sting”. It does not realize it is wrong because it has no “flesh” to feel the wound. Only you do.
If you focus on that pain, you reach the next stage: The Birth. This is the hard, exhausting work of logic that accounts for all the uncomfortable realities coming to the surface. It is building a new thought out of the cracks that the shock created. This is where you produce clarity. This is the birth of something that belongs to you.
Real thoughts only grow where there is resistance. Where it hurts to look.
My New Wealth
I have redefined what "wealth" means to me. It is no longer about the money in my bank account. Wealth is the Novelty I create within myself.
A loss is when I repeat a clever thought I heard from someone else.
A profit is when I break an old pattern and use logic to move through it physically.
Writing with pen and paper is the accounting of my wealth. When I use AI to think, I am removing all friction. I am avoiding the “Blade”. Those thoughts are not mine.
I am coming back to this newsletter to document the "Blade in the Flesh". I want to find the thoughts that hurt, because those are the only ones that lead to something I can truly own.
A question for you:
What was the last thought that actually gave you a sting? Did it lead to a birth, or did you look away?
I’ll be in touch. Or I won't. It depends on the novelty I find.