The One Lane

I’m 50 years old. I’ve got some time and other resources to work with—enough to build things, not enough to waste. I’ve got decades of software and entrepreneurship reps behind me. I love precision engineering and Japanese sports cars not as status objects, but as embodied philosophy: mastery, restraint, feedback, presence. Lately I’ve challenged myself to stay in one lane:

Create authoritative artifacts that will outlive me.

Not “content.” Not “growth.” Not “a platform.” Artifacts. Things with gravity. Things that can stand without my constant tending.

intent:
  not: [content, growth, platform]
  aim: durable_artifacts
  attributes: [weight, resilient, autonomous]

For context, my /now page has been pointing at the same constellation for a while:

Developing a small constellation of local-first projects—archives, instruments, and photo-essays—that explore attention / “AI”, embody The Ethics of Enchantment / The Unclenched Hand, stewardship, and how individuals regain authority when interfacing with large systems. Letting meaning accumulate through real use, not outcomes. Allowing the narrative to reveal itself through use.

The last line matters more than it sounds: Stop “trying to be interesting” and continue build a practice where meaning accumulates through repetition.

The principles I’m actually living by

I keep a long list of principles. I won’t pretend I execute all of them cleanly. Some are aspirations. Some are guardrails. Some are scars I wrote down so I’d stop relearning the same lesson.

A few that have become load-bearing lately:

• Attention is a moral act
• Tools must cultivate skill, not replace judgment
• Clarity comes from constraint
• Design should reveal state without demanding attention
• Sanity before scale
• Don’t outsource responsibility
• Archive to think, not to hoard
• Choose depth over drift
• Abundance follows alignment

I’ve also built an extensive “second brain” / “low-friction cognitive environment” over the years: journals, logs, dev logs, highlights, lessons learned, systems diagrams, and canon files—organized as if it’s a field manual for my future self.

The problem: I was building too many “factories”

At one point I pulled a summarized git log from mid-Dec 2025 onward and saw something uncomfortable: I was operating like a one-man factory building the factory floor, the inventory system, the marketing department, and a specialized product line—simultaneously.

Some of that was useful. Some of it was administrative procrastination in a clever outfit.

I’ve built “parts department” systems across multiple repos: fleet logs, parts catalog experiments, ledgers, little static sites. There are reasons for the fragmentation, but the core truth is simple:

Logistics work can masquerade as progress while quietly draining meaning.

That’s the moment where the lane clarified.

The axis: V10Zen and TPV-Ahimsa

Two projects emerged as the real signal.

• V10Zen is my practice at the intersection of mastery, presence, and craft—using cars, work, and attention as vehicles for excellence. I publish field notes now, essays later. It’s a living dojo. Published at: https://v10zen.com/

• TPV-Ahimsa (code / internal name) is a values-driven practice grounded in restraint, reverence for life, and responsibility—guiding how power, technology, and action are used.

Side-by-side, they form a complete axis:

• V10Zen → How do I act with excellence?
• TPV-Ahimsa → What actions should I refuse, limit, or redirect?

One sharpens capability. The other sharpens conscience.

I’ve come to believe you need both. Capability without conscience becomes optimization-for-its-own-sake. Conscience without capability can collapse into paralysis.

“The Machine” (and why I care)

I use the phrase The Machine in a very specific way. It’s not just “technology” or “capitalism” or “social media.” It’s the pattern: systems that bypass agency, that turn attention into an extraction surface, that reward drift and numbness while presenting themselves as convenience.

I even made a podcast episode centered on my definition of The Machine, using a notebook-based workflow to assemble it: https://youtu.be/iWTn6NAnCg0

Here’s the thing: my response isn’t to become a Luddite. It’s to build tools—and experiences—that restore agency.

TPV-Ahimsa as an anti-Machine interface

This is where the idea got weird (in the best way).

TPV-Ahimsa, in my mind, wants to be a Myst-like, single-player experience. Slow. Contemplative. Keyboard-driven. No mouse. No touch. No infinite scroll. You don’t “browse.” You navigate. You choose.

I want the interface to be intentionally narrow: three keys—A, S, D—or a gamepad. Three options. Discrete choice. Deliberate motion.

Because the means matter.

The means you use must be as pure as the ends you seek.

That line has been ringing in my head. If the end is restoring human agency, I can’t build it with coercive patterns. I can’t use the Ring to destroy the Ring.

The content itself is a curated stash of roughly 2,000 Instagram reels, stories, and photos around Ahimsa. Over decades, I’ve encountered nearly every objection, every “but what about,” every reflexive dodge. This archive covers the territory so thoroughly that it stops being “content” and starts becoming a moral map.

My goal is not scale. It is not conversion. It is not “dunking” on anyone.

It’s to create a steady reference point in the noise.

My second brain isn’t storage. It’s the forge

A key realization: my “second brain” is not an archive for hoarding. It’s a factory of refinement.

Of course, this is why the structure matters. I keep PRINCIPLES and STACKS folders with canon files, artifacts, diagnostics, maps—ways of knowing. Not because just because I love a good taxonomy, but because I’m trying to turn lived experience into durable form.

Some thoughts are born in journaling. Some are sparked by a conversation that knocked me off-center. Some arrive while I’m processing photos in my Fujifilm workflow—slowly, intentionally—where an image makes a principle suddenly visible.

Instagram is too noisy for this. The friction and the incentives are wrong. For me, going slow is more efficient.

The lane, stated plainly

So here’s the lane I’m committing to, at least for this season:

• Keep the second brain as source of truth.
• Build (only as much as needed) local-first tooling to curate and publish.
• Invest my creative energy where authority accumulates: V10Zen and TPV-Ahimsa.
• Treat artifacts like heirlooms: repairable, legible, low-maintenance, beautiful because they are restrained.

I’m not trying to win the internet.

I’m trying to build things that still make sense when I’m gone.

This note was drafted in collaboration with AI tools from my notes and conversations. I edited it for accuracy and tone. I’m treating it as a working memo—a snapshot of where the projects are headed, not a finished essay.