Hello! Long time no post!
Iâm planning on maybe doing a post a day for a week with my friend Simmo - feel free to unsubscribe if you donât want to be spammed. (My friend Delia also started a Substack recently because of me, hehe. (My point here is that I have friends)).
So, (apropos of nothing), my first Online Alexâąïž incarnation, the first thing I had a web presence for, was my love of âlearning how to learnâ. In November 2021 I made a very basic GitHub Pages blog with some posts based on my experience for a few years using Anki (the spaced repetition flashcard software) and a few other tools (Obsidian, Miro for visual notes, etc).
Because the universe is wonderful and insane, this project led to me getting a job that changed my life. I posted about my blog and âteaching you how to learnâ tutoring on the Effective Altruism forum, ended up having some calls with a lovely guy called Ethan, who then went on to co-found the biotech startup Alvea and bring me along for the ride.
~1 year later, FTXâs collapse led to Alveaâs wind-down, and I took my severance money and embarked on a chaotic odyssey across multiple continents in a ~2 year span and ended up stumbling into Sasha Chapinâs deep okayness (as I wrote about here). (Itâs been over a year and my baseline is still very different from how it used to be - Iâve been warned not to say this as it might piss off some Buddhists, but I think it was a âkenshoâ experience, a âtaste of enlightenmentâ, also potentially AKA âstream entryâ).
Anyway, my point is this â there was a time, which I call my ânuclear fissionâ era, where I was very âproductiveâ. I was very into âself-improvementâ, and systems like Anki flashcards, a âsecond brainâ system, timeboxing, using Beeminder, etc etc. I call it nuclear fission because I was very productive, I learned a lot, it landed me my amazing job at Alvea, but it was also definitely kind of toxic (fission nuclear reactors use toxic fuel and create toxic waste; fusion nuclear reactors do not have this problem). Very left-hemisphere-captured (to invoke Ian McGhilchrist), very alexithymic, very âeeee thereâs something wrong with me and I must work diligently to fix it by becoming Very Effectiveâ.
With the end of Alvea also came the end of my ~9 year relationship, and from the rubble emerged an exhausted herald, holding a big sign that said âthis way of living sucks dude!â. It became clear that the nuclear fission approach was no good, I was a workaholic, hiding from my crippling social anxiety, subterranean self esteem, and a desperately underdeveloped sense of self.
Attempting to cut a long story short, I then had a ~2 year era of âsolar powerâ. I fully decommissioned the nuclear fission reactor and had to discover how to operate based on my own internal preferences, as opposed to workaholism and a desperate desire to prove that I am Okay. Consensus-ism pt1 was written in this time, where this way of living was starting to click (but still as a foregrounded, âI have to intentionally remember to do thisâ thing).
The thing about moving from toxic fuel to healthy fuel is that you will be much less productive for a while, and as an enneagram 3w4 (âThe Professionalâ, YUCK), I found this very disorienting and fairly unpleasant. But I also had a very strong sense of âIâm not fuckinâ turning that reactor back onâ.
So yes anyway, my solar power infrastructure gradually improved to the point where I could do good work at Refract, an IFS startup, and I soaked up lots of learnings by my engagement with the post-rationalist space, carved out a self-concept, became more of an adult, etc. It was great.
BUT GUESS WHAT THE POINT OF THIS POST IS THAT IâM NOW NUCLEAR FUSION ALEX NOW WAHOOOO
At the start of 2025 I really didnât know what the hell I was doing with my life anymore. My interest in the post-rationalist âhealingâ space massively waned when I realised that I was absolutely âhealedâ enough (more than my wildest dreams!) post-kensho. Iâd just spent ~3 months making ~50 youtube videos including ~23 original songs, which I stopped doing when I got a lovely fan email and realised that actually I donât care about making songs or having people be moved by them (I was exploring the hypothesis of âmaybe I should have been a creativeâ and what I think Iâve landed on is âno it turns out that my nerdiness and love of being useful massively trumps my desire for self-expression).
Really trying to be concise now. 2025 â I did a personal values sprint to determine some foundational values that I could orient towards (Iâve never really had clear long term plans). I discovered âI want to be a high-impact leaderâ as a potential north star. I did a rationality sprint. I did a strategy sprint. I applied for some awesome jobs (currently waiting to see if I got the job that I did an in-person work trial for next week). I surrounded myself (digitally, admittedly) with lovely supportive friends.
So basically the point of this post is this â now that the toxic waste has been processed, and a âgrand national strategyâ has been sketched out, and now that the Prime Minister or Supreme Leader or whatever I am in this janky analogy has some foundational values and self-knowledge, itâs actually safe to re-enter the overgrown land where the now-rusty fission reactor has remained, and say âyou know what, there was a lot of great stuff in that nuclear fission reactor. Letâs retrofit it to work with cleaner fuel, and not have the toxic byproductsâ.
(I think key retrofitting ingredients include: (1) know yourself and know what you enjoy and want to do (2) have clearly elucidated values and a mission statement (3) operate from a consensus-ism-y place where you only do things when you genuinely want to (vs self coercion), etc. (Have tried and failed at enough things that you know have a better sense of what you genuinely want to do, too, itâs interesting how I feel kind of âoldâ and âwiseâ now, lol))
So basically, Iâm now being hyper-productive, learning an insane amount, super excited and agentic, super ready for the next chapter, really feeling like Iâm poised for some amazing things. Thatâs the point of this post - fusion Alex, itâs great, Iâm very excited.
The original point of this was going to be âhereâs what Iâve been learning recentlyâ, hence the thing at the start about how I first had an internet presence about learning how to learn. Because the point is that I threw away pretty much all of my systems during my solar power era, and it feels really amazing to return to them now with more wisdom, more vision, more agency, etc.
I want to write about what Iâve been learning, partly to help me make sure that Iâve really grokked the shits. But this post is long so I will leave it there.
Until next time
Ya boi
Alex