I’m designed for a life that’s designed for the brain I actually have, not the one productivity culture insists I should have.

It looks like filaments rather than projects. Cross-domain threads I keep pulling on for years that fork instead of completing. External scaffolding (jonmick.ai is mine: with texts, transcripts, Whoop data, genetics, semantic search, phone agents, etc) holding the continuity my working memory drops every night. Regular rucks where the thinking actually happens. Hot tub time I now understand as regulation, not luxury. A nervous system that runs hot enough to need both.

It looks like a partner (Charlotte) and a son (Jack) who get the real version of me because I'm not burning the day performing a fake one. Writing as the metabolism of my thinking. Faith and intellect as the quiet undercurrent.

Practically, the throttled job I described buys the only resource that I’ve realized matters (over $$): unspent cognitive capacity at the end of the day.

For a long time I assumed the problem was that I was bad at the standard life. Eventually I realized I was decent at the standard life and terrible at being myself inside it. The work since has been building outward from that.

So when you say you're done designing around what you need: yes. That's the move.