Finding My Compass Again
A note on the four months I disappeared, and what brought me back.
August 8, 2026 - Issue #157 - read online
For three years, Pursuit was a weekly email: four small reflections each time, things I'd read or lived through, checked against my own life before I sent them along. That ran for 155 issues. If any of that is new to you, the whole thing is archived at pursuit.community/archive, worth a look if you want the feel of it before reading on.
Some of you found me during the months I went quiet and have never gotten a single email until this one: welcome. I'd come across an idea, a line, an essay, something that stopped me mid-day and made me look at my own life differently. I shared them here because I thought that it might do the same for you.
It's been four months since I stopped writing you every week. When I decided to pause the newsletter, sitting down to write felt like a stretch, one more obligation eating time I didn't have to spare. It was the first thing I could point to and cut. I didn't even know how many of you were getting value from it, or looking forward to it. Somewhere along the way, it had turned from something I loved into a chore.
I'm usually good at tuning into what my mind and body are telling me. Not always, though. I learned that skill in therapy, and now that I've stopped going, the work of reflecting and course correcting is mine to do alone, before things drift too far. Prevention beats redemption. That's true in medicine, and it's true here too.
I wasn't making any money from Pursuit, and after a while I started questioning why I kept doing it. Then my fascination with AI took over. I got good at it fast, and suddenly I had hundreds of ideas in my head. I'm still excited about a lot of them. My job is demanding, and living alone means handling everything yourself on top of that. A new curiosity about AI took most of my weekday evenings, and whatever the weekends left free. Time flew by. It still does, hunched over my laptop, building systems, falling down rabbit holes convinced everything is now possible.
These tools are addictive if you love building things, if you're a systems thinker, if you carry any hint of an obsession with productivity. I had those tendencies as a kid, and I still feel them. There's a voice in me that can't picture working for someone else for the rest of my life, and mastering AI made that voice louder: this isn't going to stay an unlived dream much longer.
The thing I missed in all that momentum: writing the newsletter was the one place I paused to reflect on my life. Every week I gave it two hours, thinking through what I'd felt, checking the words of wisdom I'd collected against my own life. It was a gut check. Am I on the right track? What's draining me? What's lifting me? What is the universe whispering? I was listening. I was receiving. Writing felt like making something from inside myself, and when I could actually say what I felt and channel it onto the page, it felt good. It still does, right now. It gave me the stability to keep moving without losing my compass.
After I stopped, I noticed I was struggling to find meaning in the projects eating up my time. That scary question, so what, kept showing up. You ask yourself how you'll know that launching this or hitting that milestone will actually make you happy. This is exactly what happened when I launched my AI course. Before I ever released it, I was captivated by the fantasy: sales climbing, doors opening, a different life on the other side of it. A month after launch, the sales plateaued, and I felt the low of that fantasy collapsing. What I didn't recognize in the moment was that the fantasy had been the whole point.
Most of the goals we set for ourselves are fantasies. We set them because we enjoy imagining how we'll feel once they come true. And deep down, we're afraid of them actually arriving, because we've felt this before: the goal lands, and the feeling we promised ourselves doesn't show up with it.
Over the past month I started asking why, behind every side project, every new obsession. What hole am I trying to fill? Would any of them ever be enough to make me say I've had enough? I kept asking myself how I'd feel if I were working for myself right now. Isn't this the doom scrolling we all claim to despise? It's not productivity. It's doom scrolling wearing the costume of work, tricking my brain into believing it's building something real.
Obsession cuts both ways. It can isolate you from the things that actually matter, and blind you to how much you value them, until they're already gone. I'm glad I noticed before it got there.
I'm getting back to the practice, back to pausing and reflecting on my life, and I want to share a glimpse of it with you. Look at your own life too, if you haven't in a while. Not everything is where you want it to be. That's okay. Take a piece of paper and write down what you're going through.
Fulfillment doesn't come from outside you. It only shows up when you decide to feel it, not when whatever you're chasing finally arrives.
I don't know yet what this becomes, or how often you'll hear from me. What I do know is this: you wouldn't have read this far if you didn't already do what I do, notice when something feels off, then go looking for why. Whatever this turns into, that's the thread between us. Not the newsletter. The noticing.
With love,
Amir
Previously on Pursuit: