I came to this life by an unconventional route, though not an entirely unusual one. I spent my early twenties in tech, surrounded by people who believed the future was a thing we could engineer if we were sufficiently clever and sufficiently early. I understood the appeal. There was something almost religious about the conviction that a new protocol, a new market, a new arrangement of code might reorganize the world. I became interested in crypto before it was fashionable to be interested in it, and was fortunate enough to leave with a degree of financial independence.

What I hadn't anticipated was the peculiar flatness of getting what I wanted and discovering that I longed for something else.

I had money. I had freedom. I could spend a Tuesday afternoon reading about the Eleusinian Mysteries or fly somewhere on the whim of a passing curiosity. There was no one to ask permission from and no particular reason to get out of bed. Yet my life seemed to be happening as though I were watching a simulation of a person having experiences. I had become very good at thinking. But I wanted to become better at feeling.

I began to pay attention to the things that made me feel most alive: the charged atmosphere of a sensual evening, the private language that develops between two people, the transformation that takes place when someone who has spent years being admired finally feels understood. I was interested in beauty, but not the static kind. I wanted beauty with consequences. I wanted to participate in it, to create it, to see what could be possible between people.

So… I found myself here.