Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-09-04. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post
You likely don’t write the thought behind thoughts in your head. I don’t with anything resembling regularity. And look, I hate to say this but there’s a scary truth here. I assume if the algorithm presented you this article? Then it was a sign. We can start a club. I’ll call it the what-was-that-again rehabilitation group.
A lot of writing is missing it. We should invite those writers over, too. By it, what I mean is making clarity a priority, of building bridges from one thought to the next. I’m the first to admit that my writing can be like watching a movie in fast-forward. It’s one that began with an image of a man with a pumpkin-head writing his article out late at night. Just like me!
“Wait, why is there a pumpkin man? What did I miss.”
The missing-that’s the point.
Somewhere from the time I logged into Substack and initiated the process of “Create New Article” to the opening of this very paragraph a decision was made. A decision to create that image. I won’t argue about the quality of that decision. You’d be right. However, it was a decision that put a man writing in his notebook. A man with a pumpkin for a head. Well, this is awkward. Why’d I do that?
I know why, or rather, I will once I refill my cup. Tonight’s elixir of choice isn’t well suited but for adults. It’s a small mixed drink. A cup neither shaken nor stirred, but raw. A freezer found vial of vodka as the base coalescing with a warm healthy version of diet 7-up. The world has gone mad with pretending life needs to be won. Life needs to be lived. There’s a story about James Dean if there’s a story about living life.
But this isn’t about James Dean. Maybe it can be, but that thought will be left unbridged.
My wife just took a picture of my hair. “Your hair is very dragon-like tonight.”
“You took a picture?”
“Yes?”
“Good, take another.”
This article is … James Dean, Dragon Hair, and a Pumpkin?!
There’s a subtle point I’m illustrating by way of example up there. I put a helpful line to divide the fold. What follows is subversive. I’m going to share examples and some facts that the guy writing the article is uncomfortable writing about. He left the front door open. The thought wasn’t forgotten. It was a daytime mugging.
Writing the thought between thoughts is hard because it’s both necessary and it’s inefficient. You would never make it thru your day if you had to explain each jump, from every concept, to any and all conclusions that the lovely sack of meat inside your skull computes on demand. What happens is you’re a professional. You make decisions and assume everyone is along for the wild ride of each letter of the alphabet you organize and compose. You’re likely better than me at it-I get that. I’m just here to remind everyone: what we all forget is that no one is driving in the same car. In fact, someone is probably walking to work, taking the bus, and then there’s the guy in a leather jacket standing outside making a weird hand signal all hours of the day. It made sense to a photographer. Hippity-hop.
There are jumps and skips across content any writer writes because you’re expressing a thought to conclusion. Inside the jumps and skips is James Dean fluffing a jacket and looking so cool he can make an awkward shoulder picture be the primary example the dictionary sets down when explaining what it means to be… well, cool. Jumps and skips are the unyielding torture devices of the relationship of the reader to the writer.
I’ll tell you one of those things that only an author can bury this far down deep in a post.
You’re still reading?
Ok, let me share a little something about myself. When I write I generally assume the reader has an inner monologue. I often forget that this isn’t the default. My inner voice, which I’m told is technically the phonological loop, is a drama queen that likes to remind me of each and every small thing that could go wrong, has gone wrong, or is going wrong right this minute-IT HAS A LOT TO SAY RIGHT THIS MINUTE ABOUT THIS ARTICLE. Years of patient practice of four plus hour corporate meetings have trained me well to both ignore it and learn tricks to control it. The rhythms of my writing are admittedly odd. The words are set in such a way that my own inner voice stands (correction:STANDS) to attention and submits to the order. The signal I hope so bright and shining that it overpowers each thought. My own proverbial Bat-Signal to signal the flashing lit sign to my inner voice that “there’s no speaking in the library”.
Let’s be clear about one other thing. The writing here is true and is an intentionally crafted cover story. I just explained why I write. The specific nuance and cadence I have. Some of it is due to my first language in life being German and then my second being rural Hoosier. Bitte-Please. Now you know some German, too. You may also know how the Germans invented combinations of letters that make words stretch longer than man-made bridges. If you didn’t, I suppose you do now. The point is the lovely German words dug mile wide trenches where words were to go. There were consequences to this for a young child like me.
The German language formed these vast pits in my mind where the words are supposed to go and so the alphabet of rural Indiana poured into those pits like dinosaurs meeting the tar pits. Ya’all, howdy, and more stacked up with phrases and commas that made for the drunken ruin of more than one. The world can thank the help of a rather portly woman and her wicked ruler for her platinum creation: me. A ruler made of wood and those thin strip of metal along the edge. Her astute tutelage and well-timed character-building lessons re-educated me in her camp of heretics situated in a closeted room built shortly after the fall of the second world war. I’m not saying she had opinions about the war or my native german, but her wooden ruler sure did.
Despite her best efforts, it still takes every ounce of concentration to keep a sentence both short and free of commas. Freundschaftsbeziehungen isn’t what I have in mind when I reflect on those days. What German I do recall is carefully smuggled calculations. Digits and pleasantries, and of course Oktoberfest. Let’s not quibble on whether that’s a time of year celebration or a cultural standard, and remain friends.
There was a mugging in writing the article.
I was going to tell you about that pumpkin-man writing. The pumpkin headed man who is writing an article at the very tip-top of all of this artisenally crafted article. I could admit I forgot why that image exists. I could, but I could also share a truth wrapped in a fabrication. It’ll make more sense that way. The story I’d paint for you is one of skips and hops. It goes like this. It starts with my favorite character.
Me, of course.
If you subscribe to my substack, it’s like a tinkercrate. Every day seems to be some new ridiculous thing I’m doing as public proof to myself that, well, I’m alive. I call it agency maxing. Someone once suggested that I appear to be juggling atomic weapons with uncanny precision. The truth is buried one click deeper in. A truth where the thoughts-oh no!
I don’t remember the thought-an active mugging write here!
The thought was stolen from me because I let it slip. Sometimes I forget to write the parts between two parts. Some of it is sheer laziness, sure. A lot more of it is I just assume the reader is along for the ride. Now, lean in. I’ll share a deeper private secret with you.
I wrote earlier today-with my actual hands. It felt good. Perhaps you’re not supposed to feel good writing something without using AI. Is it safe to admit that? Let’s not mention more about it. Instead, I’ll share one more thing. There are enumerated, calculated reasons to why I write. I’m a man with so many reasons. I have that reason, that thought and let me push the keys now so you can see how the thought connects.
See, I realized some weeks back when I first had ChatGPT do the writing that it felt like something was off. I had so many articles that I couldn’t just get behind. The content made sense and it was correct and it had the polish of a well-groomed man in the grocery store. Full suit, tie, and black shoes shined to the unyielding envy of every mirror in a three block radius. I was there, too, of course. Gym pants, sleeveless shirt, bottle of Tito’s and a bag of chips. The Kindergarten ruler was effective. That word, Kindergarten? It’s a German word. I’m being clever. An editor would see this post and delete everything but four words. Maybe the editor knows the thief that keeps mugging our thoughts. The AI certainly is in on it.
Be careful who you tell, but the AI is definitely in on it. See, what I just can’t get behind is the AI’s unexpected mugging. Using AI, my thoughts were getting airlifted away. Sure, I was getting to THE_ANSWERS. What incredible power to have the answer to every benign question I ever dared to dream up. Yet, I just felt my brain organizing in a way that’s like asking a dog to organize a bowl of spaghetti. That’s when it dawns on me that I had seen thru the matrix. Like Neo, I realized that I was seeing it everywhere: thoughts where people were forgetting why they thought what they thought. It’s not about why fork doesn’t go in the electrical outlet. Sticking a metal fork into an outlet is a terrible idea and leads to death.
The mind, our brains, are not wires and gizmos. We aren’t vast number crunching machines that scale to the vast reaches of the cosmos. Our minds are organic because we are of that place-even if some people might seem or pretend otherwise. The human brain isn’t an organized circuit that’s pressed by factory into an optimized pattern. The goo between our ears is fluid. It’s a complex and dynamic ecosystem with plants and wilderbeasts and a little James Dean. And it’s why there’s a Pumpkin head at the start of this post.
Watch those thoughts as you write them. If you’re not careful, there’s slip away or even worse be filed in a mugging report. It’s extremely difficult to do, you know. I’m told it’s all very simple. One key after the other. Frame the audience, set the stage, cast the characters, and share the story. What I do know is this. The thought behind thoughts is where the writer may actually live.
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Connected work
- Every Paragraph Is a Universe: Follow another sentence into a much larger room.
- On Letting AI Do the Writing: Read why writing practice still matters when AI can draft.
- Writing Exercise: Palimpsest: Try a human-first exercise about memory, revision, and voice.