The Weight of a Weightless World
That song... “La Câlin.” It’s not just in my bio. It’s in my bones. It’s the sound of that “endless loop of nostalgia,” a feeling that’s haunted me for as long as I’ve been aware. It’s a melancholy ache, but not for a specific past. It’s not about missing the 90s or an old childhood home.
It’s a nostalgia for gravity. A longing for substance in a world that feels increasingly weightless. A craving for the permanent in an age defined by the delete key.
I am a “Millennium mind.” My consciousness was forged in the dial-up hiss and baptized in the blue light of a million browser tabs. My “Dev” self lives and breathes in this world. He sees life in systems, in logic, in lines of code that can build a universe from nothing. He is fast. He is iterative. He understands the glorious, terrifying power of rm -rf—the ability to destroy and rebuild in an instant.
He is a god in a digital pantheon, creating and uncreating with a few keystrokes. And he is completely, utterly untethered.
The “Dev” in me is a factory for ghosts. He builds systems that are obsolete by the time they are stable. He designs interfaces that are forgotten in the next cycle. He writes code that is refactored, replaced, and ultimately relegated to a commit history that no one will ever read. He is a master of the ephemeral.
And my “old-school values”—my soul—cannot breathe in that thin air.
My soul craves the analog. It craves the “Legal Thinker.” Where the Dev sees a blank slate, the Legal Thinker sees precedent. Where the Dev sees a bug to be patched, the Legal Thinker sees a foundation to be honored. The Dev builds on a shifting cloud. The Legal Thinker builds on stone.
And so, I live in the static between these two worlds. I am a builder who is haunted by the impermanence of his own creations. I am a logician who is pulled by the illogical, poetic gravity of the past.
I will spend a day building a complex, beautiful database—a weightless architecture of pure information. And I will end that day with a physical need to hold a hardcover book. To feel the grain of the paper. To smell the ink and the glue. To hold something that doesn't vanish when the power goes out.
This is the ache. This is the loop.
For years, this tension felt like a flaw. A bug in my own code. Why couldn't I just be? Why couldn't I be the pure, forward-facing futurist, always chasing the next framework? Why couldn't I be the simple, grounded craftsman, happy to work with his hands, ignoring the siren call of the digital?
I was a man from two different eras, living in one body, and the war was exhausting. The “Creative Builder” in me was paralyzed. He was the child of this broken marriage, standing in a workshop filled with scattered blueprints for digital castles and half-carved pieces of wood. He was the master of the unfinished project. The graveyard of good intentions.
Because how can you build when your foundation is in conflict with your materials? How can you create a future when you're endlessly nostalgic for the weight of the past?
The “Legal Thinker” was the one who finally offered a bridge. He doesn't just see the past as a romantic memory. He sees it as a system. He sees law.
Law is the original code. It's an invisible architecture built to structure human chaos. It is a set of rules, like any programming language. But unlike my JavaScript frameworks, its foundations are not meant to be replaced every six months. They are meant to endure. The law is a system that aspires to permanence.
It is a “Millennium mind” (complex, systemic, logical) built on “old-school values” (truth, justice, foundation, precedent).
This was the blueprint. This was the way out of the loop.
I realized I wasn't a flawed Dev. I was an architect. An architect doesn't just think about the drywall and the glass. He thinks about the bedrock. My “old-school values” are not a bug. They are my bedrock. My “endless loop of nostalgia” is not a distraction. It is my compass, constantly pulling me back to what matters.
So, what does this look like? It looks like building digital tools that are not just functional, but foundational. It means the “Dev” in me is no longer allowed to just build fast. He must now build right. He must answer to the “Legal Thinker.”
When I build a system now, I ask: Is this true? Is this just? Does this have gravity? Or is it just another ghost?
This philosophy changes what I build. It’s why I’m drawn to the chaos of family law—it is the most human, most analog problem being forced into a digital, bureaucratic system. It’s a place where the code is broken and the old-school values (like protecting a child) are getting lost in the noise. My mind—the Dev, the Thinker, the Builder—sees a system that needs a refactor. A foundation that needs to be re-established.
It’s why I build adhdsystembuilder.com. I am not just building “productivity hacks.” I am trying to build a foundation for a chaotic mind. A quiet room in the storm. A place with weight. The “how-to” is the Dev's work. The “why” is the Legal Thinker's.
And it’s why I write here. This space. writeas.com. It's a digital tool that feels analog. It’s a blank page. It has no noise. It has gravity. It is the perfect synthesis of my two worlds.
I still live in the tension. The ache is still there. The music is still playing. The Millennium mind still wants to fly. The old-school soul still wants to plant roots. But it is no longer a war. It is a dance.
The “Creative Builder” is finally working. He uses the Dev's speed to lay the foundations. He uses the Legal Thinker's logic to make them sound. And he uses the old-school soul's nostalgia to make sure he is building something that matters.
Something that has weight in a weightless world. Something that can withstand the storm. A blueprint for a better system. A quiet place to build.
I didn’t come here to shout.
I came to write in peace — and perhaps, to reclaim it.