Permission to Play

Introducing RØMA + Dawn Etiquette, Sea Fan Woodcuts, Some of the Dharma, & Stitching Together a Vision of Happiness

Sep 01, 2025

"As you begin on the way, the way appears."

Rumi

[1.1] A long-held dream of mine is complete self-expression: to know my mind, to feel my heart, to make things with a measure of skill and beauty - and to live in a way that backs it all up.

Am I there yet? I’m not.

Am I on the way? I am.

[1.2] Every step forward asks for the same thing: permission. Permission to play, to explore what feels alive, to experiment constantly and try things without apology.

This next chapter is a nod to that.

[1.3] I’m switching things up. I’m pulling off the self-help highway and taking a tour of the creative back roads: travel writing, design, photography, and material crafts.

For the year ahead, I’m giving this thing a new name: RØMA - a Record of My Adventures (the “ø” is just for flair/looks cool, like a compass mark on a map or something). It’s a shift outward, toward places and projects, noticing the world and making things from it. I’m more ready than I’ve been in a long time.

To everyone who’s been riding shotgun with me on The Inner Act - thank you. The first 44 issues were a joy to shape, and I’m grateful to all of you who have subscribed, followed, read and shared a word of support. I hope you’ll stick around for what’s next.

Let’s get to it.

[2.1] _NAMES_

There’s this paradox I’m living with: the desire to “call each thing by its right name” - alliums, hydrangea, acidanthera, narcissi-bulbocodium, ammi visnaga, gladiolas, dahlias, sweet peas, anemones, palmer punstemons - and to see things without naming them at all.

[2.2] DAWN_ETIQUETTE

Between 5 and 7 a.m., there’s two tribes at the springs:

Run Clubs. They barrel in fresh off their mileage, a chorus of whoops and chest-thumps. Loud, peacocking, supplemented to the gills. I get it - I really do - the energy is infectious, and I love it sometimes. But not at this hour. Not when the light’s just turning. It feels brutish and tasteless to greet dawn by cannonballing off the diving board or going on and on about how you stay fit.
Swimmers. Entirely different story. They slip in while it’s still dark out. They don’t talk. You might hear a hushed and courteous “good morning,” but mostly, it’s a silent ritual. Shoes off. Shirts off. Caps on. Goggles down. A few arm swings, then laps. When they’re done, they sit at the edge of the pool with hot drinks in their tumblers, watching the sky bleed open, reverent and still.

The swimmers leave the moment the run clubs arrive. I like them. I prefer them… but every time I catch myself thinking that, I can feel it: the slow drift toward becoming Daniel Day Lewis in Phantom Thread.

[2.3] WINDOW_SEAT

At 30,000 feet, the horizon gets a little curve back. Which, inevitably, reminds me of Stewart Brand in the ’60s - a guy in a top hat (not a metaphor, literally a top hat), out in California hustling buttons and bothering NASA:

“Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?”

The man knew. He knew that if we could just see the thing - the planet, whole, blue, fragile, spinning in the void - it would crack something open in us. Perspective as a unifier. And he was right. The photo dropped, and a movement started. Because that kind of perspective simplifies things - and we’re perpetually short of it.

In the margins of his biography, I scribbled a note: “When we’re spirit-fatigued, we make weak decisions.” Which is to say, someone low in spirit wouldn’t do this. They would be more “reasonable,” keep things lukewarm. Stewart isn’t that. He’s spirited. Lit from within. And that’s the difference between a shrug and a cultural shift.

[3.1] SEA FAN WOODCUTS_JO DE PEAR

There’s this stage in an artist’s career that I can’t stop noticing. It rustles up a lot of envy in me - but in the good way, the “damn, that’s cool” way. It’s when they have their craft dialed in enough that the distance between spark and thing-made is basically zero. Inspiration hits, they flip the switch, the engine’s already warm, and suddenly there’s an idea on the table, in the world, real.

That’s what I think of when I watch Jo work - process on display, humming, alive. One minute she’s catching a feeling, the next it’s a whole piece, sitting there, fully formed, like it was obvious all along. The sight of it gives me a jolt every time:

“Oh right, that’s what you want, keep going, you’ll get there too.”

[4.1] SOME_OF_THE_DHARMA

Remember how lonely you were in TX ‘19? Or how down you were after London ‘21?

Look at you now. You wouldn’t change a thing.

[4.2] I_CHING

It sounds like fortune-cookie fodder until you actually sit with it. People sniff out when you’re cosplaying - when you’re acting for applause instead of building from the inside out. Truth has gravity. Follow it, and hearts fall into orbit.

[5.1] ANALOG_ARCHIVES

New month, new Monday. Perfect excuse to nerd out with some stationery.

Lately, I’ve been using a simple layout - just a clean page for highlights, scribbles, scratches and whatever habits I’m into. At first it’s just fragments (“bar games with my sister,” “feeling like my intuition is high,” “porch chat with Carter”) - but the pieces add up, and suddenly there’s a stitched-together vision of happiness.

The scan up top is mine. If you want your own, there’s a PDF you can print below. But honestly: steal it, tweak it, make it look worse, make it look better, make it yours. This isn’t a strict Track-My-Life™; it’s just a low-stakes way of touching pen to paper and finding time for some pleasant record-keeping.