Tag: transformation

We’re Stuck in Monkey Loops

It’s definitely not the case that we’re very good at understanding what our brain and body actually want. There are too many signals coming at us from all directions, both inside and outside ourselves. Learning to consistently Fourier transform that constant stream of input is already difficult, and teasing out actual cause and effect is even harder. To make things more complicated, what you’re drawn toward is not always what you actually need, because certain things can override the subtler signals of your body by hijacking your brain chemistry.

In the modern world, this discrepancy is especially obvious because companies know that if they can manipulate your brain chemicals, they can convince you to buy things or engage in behaviours that maybe aren’t good for you, but make them a lot of money. We’ve reached a stage of history where an enormous amount of research has been done, information is widely available, and much of this practice has been refined into a pure science. This is definitely not great for the wellbeing of the average person. Daily life starts to feel suffocating because we’re constantly battling junk that’s competing for our attention: advertisements, social media notifications, ultra-processed food wrapped in bright colours and tempting commercials, clickbait headlines, endless feeds. At a certain point, it’s all just plainly exhausting.

Whenever I feel lost, I like to look back at the way humans evolved. People often talk about how evolution moves extremely slowly, while culture and society, especially in the digital age, evolve absurdly quickly. One example I hear people talk about is our relationship with sugar. Early humans almost never encountered anything close to pure sugar; maybe fruit, maybe some honey if they were willing to fight a beehive for it. But now, sugary foods are everywhere, often cheaper than healthier alternatives, and engineered to taste incredible. What exactly are we supposed to do with that?

Another example people bring up a lot is anxiety. Our brains evolved to experience some baseline level of anxiety because, historically, there really was bananas stuff happening all the time. But now, when most people are most often relatively physically safe, the brain still insists on manufacturing threats and stress responses for situations where constant cortisol is mostly useless.

I was watching a YouTube video by a doctor talking about learning how to rest and recover properly. You can watch it here – it’s reasonably short and sweet and contains a lot more interesting stuff than what I talk about here. He mentioned something that really caught my attention: when the brain becomes tired, you start experiencing decision fatigue. That’s apparently one of the clearest indicators of mental exhaustion: just look at how difficult it suddenly becomes to make simple choices.

When the brain is low on energy, its instinct is to choose whatever requires the least effort, because from an evolutionary perspective, low effort meant conserving resources. Back then, though, low effort also usually meant low stimulation: in other words, rest. In our modern world, that’s not really the way it works anymore.

Because of the immediate micro-rewards we get from scrolling and, let’s say, other “chemically juicy” activities, it’s often easier to reach for internet-based stimulation than to sit quietly or do something slower and less rewarding. I’m pretty sure the brain runs some kind of short-term cost-benefit analysis, and the short-term dopamine hit wins almost every time. The problem is that when your brain is already low-energy, it’s also decision-fatigued, meaning you’re even more likely to choose the easiest option available. Modern life has created a horrible feedback loop where the “easiest” option, the choice you’re most likely to make, also further exhausts your brain by bombarding it with lights, colours, novelty, emotional prompts, and constant stimulation. So your brain gets more tired, which pushes you further toward the short-term dopamine rewards, which tires your brain even more.

The doc in the video also said that physical exhaustion clears noticeably with sleep, but sleep doesn’t do a number on mental exhaustion in the same way. Scary stuff.

He offered a few practical bandaids for dealing with this. One is to make the “hard” option require as little decision-making as possible. Remove planning and coordination wherever you can. For example, schedule fixed gym times every week so you don’t have to negotiate with yourself about whether or not to go. The habit itself also creates momentum, which helps reduce friction. Another suggestion was to avoid overcomplicating the planning of difficult tasks. Don’t spend thirty minutes engineering the perfect workout. Just get yourself to the gym and figure the rest out once you’re there. The third was reframing effortful activities as active choices rather than obligations. You’re choosing to go to the gym because you care about your health and want to be responsible for yourself, not because some external force is punishing you into doing it. “Shoulds” and “oughts” can take a lot of the joy out of life.

All of these things help you choose the harder, less immediately satisfying option. But they aren’t cure-alls, and they’re not automatically spiritually nourishing either. Honestly, the only thing that has consistently helped me make structural changes around addictive behaviours is understanding what’s actually happening in the brain when I’m already overstimulated (or otherwise feeling yucky) and still choose to further overstimulate myself (or do something that’s going to feel good temporarily but make me feel more yucky in the long term). Understanding the loop itself matters. The dependency. The way the brain twists into patterns that reinforce their own continuation.

It’s not perfect. I scrolled Facebook Marketplace way too many times today and fried my prefrontal cortex. None of the YouTube videos I tried to watch during dinner were even remotely satisfying, despite my many attempts to stick with one. But somehow, here I am, writing this instead. Thankfully, I had enough wherewithal today to remember that video, and realize that maybe my brain wasn’t actually incapable of doing the harder thing. Maybe starting just felt monumental because I was already scattered from all my phone gooning, and what I really needed was a single activity to affix my attention to.

So I guess surviving modern life has a lot to do with understanding the loops in the brain that fold in on themselves and quietly push you toward behaviours that aren’t actually good for you. This is a responsibility that has been thrust on us, I would say unfairly, and if you’re suffering, just know that it’s because none of us were built for this shit.

May 26, 2026
The Body Knows Your Fashion Crimes

I find the ways that human beings respond to aesthetics to be deeply interesting. We, as a species, seem to possess a nearly animal sensitivity to congruence; that is to say, we are constantly, instinctively scanning for harmonies and disharmonies between things. We can notice when a song and a photograph somehow contain the exact same emotional texture. We notice when a painting reminds us of a particular person. We notice when somebody’s bedroom or dog looks exactly like them. We notice, at least subconsciously, when somebody’s outfit appears to be wearing them, rather than the other way around.

There are certain people who feel so coherent that every object surrounding them starts to look like an extension of their internal world. Their jewelry makes sense with their voice. Their apartment makes sense with their posture. Their makeup makes sense with the cadence of their speech. It all appears to emerge from the same source, the same underlying current. Even if you dislike the aesthetic itself, the harmony is palpable. Something in you relaxes around it.

What we often call a “vibe” is simply this underlying coherence made perceptible. A vibe is not tied to a particular medium. The same emotional essence can exist in a painting, a song, a building, a person, or a coat. Sassy and zany is a vibe. So is softness, sleaze, intellectualism, tenderness, sincerity, and industrial coldness. These things can all be translated between mediums like a kind of emotional language.

Artists do this constantly. A good artist can take a feeling and package it into their medium. Another artist, working in a completely different medium, can package the same feeling in a completely different form. The observer recognizes the commonality instinctively.

Humans are strange ecosystems made up of thousands of feelings, patterns, instincts, aesthetics, and selves layered on top of one another. The world responds to you according to the version of yourself that you present, but more strangely, you also begin responding to yourself that way. If you dress polished and elegant, people unconsciously expect elegance from you. If you dress chaotic and playful, people unconsciously make space for chaos and playfulness. If you present yourself like somebody worthy of being listened to, people often listen. Because humans (including you!) are socially porous creatures, you start actually becoming more of whatever is being reflected back at you.

This is part of why confidence is so reality-altering. Human beings reorganize themselves around certainty. The universe itself almost seems allergic to incongruence; if one person refuses to budge in their belief about who they are, eventually the social world around them starts bending to accommodate the claim. I do not fully understand it. I only know I have seen it happen too many times to ignore.

Clothing is especially interesting because it sits directly on the body. It is probably the fastest and most accessible way to alter your relationship to yourself.

To lead with my own example: for a long time, I dressed almost exclusively in ways that emphasized the intellectual parts of me. Respectably intellectual. Slightly frumpy. Thrifted. Eco-conscious. Clothes that suggested I cared more about ideas than appearances. Lots of sweaters. Ill-fitting pants and unflattering t-shirts. Things with holes (some of you know the horror of my old Converse hi-tops…) that at some point certainly crossed the line from charming to concerning.

And to be clear, that version of me is real. I am intellectual. I do love old things and books and little objects with history attached to them and wearing shoes until they fall off. But over time, I began realizing that I was not merely expressing that side of myself. I was reinforcing it. Every day, I was participating in a feedback loop that amplified a particular mode of being.

The problem was that this version of me was not always especially happy. She tended anxious. Self-conscious. Awkward and afraid of being perceived. Often uncomfortable with taking up space. Frankly, some part of her, somewhere, thought herself low on life’s social totem pole. There was a kind of flattening effect happening where my presentation was emphasizing some of the least joyful parts of my personality while suppressing others that were equally real.

I know now that I am not only that person. I also love softness. Glamour. Nice tailoring. Leather. Leopard print. The occasional hyperfeminine silhouette. Luxurious fabrics. Sleaze. Rhinestones and sparkles. Taken all together: the aesthetic sensibilities of a woman who has a well-paying job but put herself through graduate school on the dime of shady nightclub patrons.

What shocked me was not merely that I enjoyed dressing this way, but that doing so, even in small ways (but nonetheless really mentally and emotionally leaning into it), altered my internal landscape almost immediately.

When I dress in ways that feel glamorous and coherent and embodied and sensual, I become more audacious. Quicker. Wittier. Less fragmented. Less afraid. I make more eye contact. I flirt more with life, and encourage life to flirt back. I speak more directly. I stop shrinking. I become more playful. More magnetic. More alive. Importantly, this does not feel false, which is the part that interests me most.

People often talk about fashion as though it is either superficial performance or authentic self-expression, but this binary is incomplete. Humans are multifaceted. Most of us contain many legitimate selves, many dormant emotional configurations, many possible ways of moving through the world. Clothing does not necessarily fabricate an identity from thin air. Often, it simply calls one forward.

This is also why some outfits feel can “wrong” even when they are objectively attractive. Sometimes the proportions or colours are genuinely bad, yes. But often, the discomfort comes from the fact that the clothing is asking the wearer to embody an energy that they either do not possess or do not trust themselves enough to access. The body knows when crimes of incongruence are being committed. The most beautiful dress in the world cannot save an outfit that is fundamentally disconnected from the person inside it. Conversely, I have seen people wear objectively bizarre things with complete conviction and somehow transmute them into coherence through sheer embodied certainty.

I think this is why style can become something almost spiritual; selfhood is strangely malleable, and aesthetics are one of the ways we communicate with the subconscious mind. If there are parts of you, even unrealized, that are sensual, capable, elegant, playful, dangerous, soft, intelligent, glamorous, or bold, and you repeatedly present yourself as such, eventually a part of you, the doubtful part, begins believing it. And, as we previously established, once you believe it, other people often do too.

So, I think the goal of fashion and style is to become intimate with your own multiplicity, and to notice which modes of selfhood that your chosen aesthetics nourish. In other words, realize that you are not just choosing between authenticity and inauthenticity, but between different authentic modes of self-expression that can help you, each day, become the person that you want to be.

May 15, 2026
Love and Genetic Alchemy

1

Love doesn’t just touch you—it rewrites you.

It gets under the armour, past the walls, slipping between the cracks of who you think you are and splicing new code into your being. Love has high penetrating power. It works its way in like a virus or a gene-editing enzyme, excising pieces of you and stitching something new in their places. Love has the targeted DNA shearing power of a CRISPR protein, and in the aftermath of the double-stranded snip, cellular repair squadrons swoop in to rewrite parts of your psyche with the borrowed strands of another’s genome. And once the new code is in, once the sequence has been altered, you are never quite the same again.

I can see this in myself. It took me a long time to notice how much of me is a patchwork of people and things I have loved. How much I am a chimera, a genetic mosaic made from every connection that has ever mattered to me. New ways of thinking, new instincts, new affinities—traits that seemingly didn’t exist before, now woven into the fabric of who I am. Sometimes, the transformation is stark and undeniable. Other times, it’s subtle, a quiet shift in perspective that only reveals itself in long hindsight.

This is why love can be terrifying. It changes you, and not always in ways you expect.

2

There is a reason that heat is a catalyst for many chemical reactions involving DNA. Love doesn’t just change you—it warms you up, makes you malleable, softens the rigid structures inside of you. It moves through you like fire, like water, like something that has the power to undo all the careful ways you’ve held yourself together. There’s a reason why the most intense moments of love, grief, passion, or revelation feel like they shake you apart—because they do. Love pumps energy into you, heightens your emotional frequency, and suddenly, you are no longer solid. You are vibrating, melting, reforming. Some transformations happen slowly, like water carving stone over centuries, the edges smoothing so gradually you don’t even notice the change until you compare yourself to who you once were. Others happen in an instant, like an atom bomb detonating inside your chest, obliterating old structures before you can even understand what has happened.

I like to think that we were all born as plasticine blobs, pre-shaped to an extent, but mostly undifferentiated. We begin as something soft, impressionable, capable of being molded. Our nature (genetics) sets the basic parameters—the hue, the density, the initial form of our sculpture. But it is experience, it is connection, it is love that presses into us, leaving imprints, reshaping us into something new. Some experiences leave small marks, barely perceptible indentations, while others press in so deeply that they change our entire shape. Over time, we become a mosaic of everything that has ever touched us. And it isn’t just love as we understand it that does this—it’s anything that moves us. Anything that stirs emotion, anything that heats you up, has the power to reconfigure you; love just does it best. It is the things you don’t care about that tend to leave you unchanged.

This is why resistance to love can feel like freezing—a rigid refusal to let yourself soften, to let warmth reach the places that have been locked in ice. The more frozen you are, the harder it is for love to get in. You convince yourself that you are protecting something essential, that staying solid, staying intact, is the safest thing to do. But the moment you allow yourself to feel, to be fully immersed in the present, to surrender to the current of transformation—you melt. And melting isn’t destruction. It is the return to something fluid, something adaptable, something capable of flowing into the spaces you were never able to reach before.

There’s a theory that heightened emotion is the key to manifestation; that a clear vision accompanied by strong feelings is what opens the door to change. When love (or joy, bliss, gratitude, etc.) floods you with energy, it makes you plastic, pliable, open to new possibilities. It breaks down old bonds, dissolving rigid beliefs about who you are, allowing something new to take shape. This is why change so often feels like an unraveling—because it is. You are being taken apart so that you can be put back together in a way that better fits the person you are becoming.

Maybe this is why love changes people so profoundly. Maybe this is why it feels like some force greater than yourself is at work when you fall deeply into it. It is not just affection. It is not just connection. It is a process of alchemical transformation. And if you let it in, if you surrender to it, if you allow it to warm you, shake you, melt you—you will become something new.

3

Love is supposed to change you. That’s its nature, and our nature. But what happens when you resist that change? What happens when you brace yourself against it, trying to hold your shape, refusing to let love reach inside you?

There are so many reasons why someone might harden themselves against love. Maybe it’s the fear of losing control, the fear that if you let yourself be changed too much, you will no longer recognize who you are. Maybe it’s the belief that you must protect yourself, that being reshaped by someone else’s presence is a kind of invasion. Or maybe you’ve been burned before—maybe you’ve opened yourself in the past, let love carve into you, only to feel like you have been left with a worse version of yourself. And so, instead of letting love in, you fortify yourself against it. You put up walls. You tell yourself you will only love if you can control its effects, if you can keep yourself intact.

But love doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t ask permission before it starts rearranging you. And if you try to resist, if you brace against the impact, the result is not safety—it’s damage. It’s like trying to contain an explosion by tensing every muscle in your body, believing that if you just hold yourself together tightly enough, no one will see or feel the blast. But the force has to go somewhere. And instead of being absorbed, instead of integrating, instead of flowing through you naturally, the energy turns inward.

This is where love turns into suffering. Because resisting love doesn’t keep you from being reshaped—it fractures you like brittle ice. The parts of you that were meant to grow and expand instead become compressed, tangled, distorted. And eventually, when love is forced into such an unnatural shape, it curdles. It can become resentment, fear, even hatred.

Hatred, in a strange way, is its own form of love. It is not cold. It is not indifferent. It is heightened emotion, and like all heightened emotions, it has the power to change you. This is why disdain and contempt are so dangerous in relationships. The moment you begin to look down on someone, to view them with a sense of superiority or judgment, your brain begins protecting you from them. It starts whittling down your capacity to feel love for them, because deep down, it knows that love begets openness, and openness means allowing yourself to be changed. If you are afraid of that change—if you overemphasize their flaws and convince yourself you would never want to be altered by them—you begin to love them less. One of my favourite quotes, which you likely will have heard if you know me in real life, is “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” I know for a fact that I have loved and hated something strongly at the same time. I never loved or hated something at the same time as feeling indifferent towards it.

Sometimes, that aforementioned “disdain” protection mechanism fails. Sometimes you love someone or something even when you believe you shouldn’t. Maybe it reinforces the most self-destructive parts of you. Maybe it brings out a version of yourself that you don’t want to be. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that the love is wrong, that you must fight it, that you cannot let it touch you. And yet, despite everything, it still does. Love is not always gentle. Sometimes it is an earthquake. Sometimes it is a wildfire. And sometimes, it is a force you try to resist with everything in you, only to find that it has already reshaped you in ways you can’t undo.

4

How do you know that you’ve loved something? Not just liked it, not just appreciated it, but truly let it touch you, seep into you, change you?

My simple proposal is this: if you are different after it, you have loved it. Love is transformation. It does not leave you as it found you. The things you have loved shape you, leave their fingerprints in your psyche, their colors in your soul. The things that have mattered to you are woven into your very being, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes so subtly that you don’t even notice until years later, when you catch yourself doing something, saying something, believing something—and you realize, this wasn’t the same me as before.

That’s how you know love was there. You are a mosaic of everything you’ve ever felt those heightened emotions about. A genetic chimera, a patchwork creature assembled from the fragments of people, ideas, moments that have left imprints on you. If you look closely enough, you can trace the lines, find the seams, see the places where the architecture of your identity has been altered. And the most profound changes are not always from the people you spent the most time with. Some shifts happen in an instant. Some influences cut so deep, they become part of you overnight. Others take longer, working their way in over time, settling into the crevices of your being until they are indistinguishable from the rest of you.

But here’s the thing that’s always true—you have to be open to love’s influence.

Because: resisting and struggling against it warps you. Love requires a kind of surrender, a willingness to let yourself be reshaped. When you fight against it, when you try to control the process, you don’t actually stop the transformation—you just make it more painful. Love will change you, whether you want it to or not. But how it changes you depends on your ability to allow, to receive, to flow with it rather than against it.

I’m starting to understand what it means to be open to having love alchemize me. To allow it to move through me rather than trying to leash it. To trust that whatever it shifts in me was always meant to be uncovered, was always part of me, just waiting to be activated.

I guess I’m a mosaic in the same way that the art I make is. A combination of different textures, different influences, different materials fused together into something uniquely mine. I am a multimedia piece—shaped by music I’ve listened to, books I’ve read, places I’ve been, people I’ve known, and the emotions I have let myself fully feel.

Love gets into all your nooks and crannies, filling the spaces between the pieces of you, fusing them together in ways you never could have done alone. Its penetrating power is high—it seeps in like psilocybin, rewiring your brain, revealing new pathways, opening doors you didn’t even know existed. And once you’ve seen yourself through love’s lens, you can’t unsee it.

If I had never loved the way I have, I know for a fact I would not be the person I am now. But trying to trace back the exact influences, to extract which exact pieces came from where, feels impossible. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. All I know is that if I want to keep growing, if I want to keep evolving into whoever I am meant to become, I have to keep seeking love. In people, in experiences, in the quiet moments of resonance that pull me toward something I don’t fully understand yet.

Because love is a mirror. It reflects back the parts of you that you haven’t fully met yet. And when you let it in, when you surrender to the way it rearranges you, you become something new.

Love has changed me deeply, and I hope love changes me 10,000 times over again.

February 25, 2025