A Draft of Yourself

On nomads, realized humans, and a 109-minute family interview finally out the door.

July 6, 2026 | Telluride, Colorado

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When I was 20 I lived in Nepal for four months. I spent about ten days of that living in a monastery in the hills above Kathmandu. I remember meeting a much older guy there, a guy who was probably about my age now. He lived in the monastery for eight or nine months of the year. They only charged a nominal fee, like $5 per day, and for that you got a little room and they fed you. He’d fly back to the U.S. for about three months a year, paint houses, save up enough money, and return. He felt like he had it made, that he’d cracked the code.

My 20-year-old self looked upon him with curiosity and a mix of admiration and slight judgment. Probably similar to how some people look upon my lifestyle now. But all nomads are not created equal. My observation is that they fall into three distinct categories: those who are running away from something, those who are simply existing, and those who are moving towards something. The latter are the ones that interest me. Attaining the freedom is great, it’s incredible, but what I find more interesting is when people are using that freedom to apply themselves toward their interests. My sense was that the monastery guy was just existing. He’d found a way to live comfortably doing as little as possible. Good for him, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’d find him much more interesting if he were using those nine months to write the Great American Novel, collect moths, master painting, study the stars, make some kind of art, or pursue whatever his passion might be.

I have a dear friend in his 60s who once described himself to me as unrealized. This stuck with me. He’s a wonderful person with a great life and I think he’s happy. But that way of framing a person, realized or unrealized, made an impression on me. What is the distinction exactly? Here’s how Fable 5 describes it:

The everyday register is about potential. When someone calls themselves unrealized in this sense, they mean something like: there’s a version of me that exists in outline but hasn’t been built. The talents haven’t been expressed, the work hasn’t been made, the life hasn’t taken the shape it was pointing toward. It’s the feeling of being a draft of yourself. There’s often grief in it, but also a strange kind of hope, because the claim implies the potential is still there, waiting. A person who says this is usually telling you they can feel the gap between what they sense they could be and what their days actually look like.

I want to be a realized human, and my gentle wish for everybody else is to feel realized as well. That requires using your energies to move towards something each day. Something well beyond simply existing.

Yesterday I made the edits my father requested on the video interview I recorded of him and my uncle Fang back in March. It turned out great. A family record that will only get more precious over time. I learned a lot making this video: 109 minutes, three cameras, four microphones, and tedious largely manual subtitles all the way through. It’s been on my plate since we recorded it months ago and I’m pleased to have it out the door.

A pattern has emerged in the skies here. Mornings are clear, then late in the afternoon something changes with the wind and the sky fills with smoke. It clears out overnight again.

I’m cycling through countless tasks throughout the day. I’m putting time into the van reorganization each day and will continue until it’s done. More Amazon packages on the way, including the small screws I need to complete much of the new installation work. That means a town run probably Saturday or Sunday to pick those up, top off water, dump trash, and handle any other small errands. Once a week is reasonable, though I’d like to stretch it longer when I can.

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