September was scattered building: a bunch of vectors pointing in a million different directions. I used to discount this mode. Tiny progress on a bunch of things? Didn't count. But this month taught me to love it. It stretches my mind, it helps me learn faster, and it gives me signal on which vectors deserve more energy.

I'm in the beautiful messy middle of my year off (I keep calling it that even though I'm working 40+ hours a week on 20 to 30 things at once). I'm learning to be okay without a common thread tying it all together. Right now, it's enough to say I'm building things that are interesting to me. No neat bow required.

Kids' typing games, ingredient substitute websites, B2B Amazon ad optimization. I'm learning more than I ever have before, and that's what I want to be maximizing right now.

 

• Neon. Watching someone bend neon right in front of me was incredible. He talked about everything neon with so much passion that I was entranced: the colors we've lost over time, the bends that are tricky, the different ways to do an O (from crossover to double back). Plus working with your hands. Plus fire. An actual open flame. It mixed all my favorite things from the tactile world into one.

• Momentum. I hinted at this up top, but the hard mode of pursuing 1,000 things at once is finally paying off. It's so fun to watch a site go from a few hundred daily visitors to a few thousand in a month, and to know I'm building playbooks I can repeat. It's even more fun when it happens across multiple projects at the same time.

• Getting back on my feet. Post-surgery workouts are challenging, but I can feel myself getting physically stronger.

• Scattered mind. The tax on moving a million things at once. Sometimes it shows up as anxiety. Sometimes it shows up as a need to keep moving and not being okay with being still. I should probably bring back meditation, plus a little boredom and stillness.