Learning to live with models,
without living in them.

What it is

Part idea, part practice

Every session pairs a piece of the thinking with something you actually do. The thinking builds slowly: what direct experience is, before any theory touches it; what models are and what they are for; where they end; and the quiet moment a model stops serving a life and starts judging one.

The practice is where it lands. Early on you locate a real problem of your own — one that hasn't yielded to analysis, effort, or the frameworks you've tried — and the course keeps returning to it. The work stays yours throughout: no one examines your models for you, and nothing asks you to distrust thinking itself. The aim is the one the whole project carries — restoring the proper order: models as tools within your life, not rulers over it.

The shape

How it runs

Format

A small group, meeting in person. Location shared with those who enroll.

Rhythm

Weekly two-hour sessions, each pairing an idea with a practice, with light practice between meetings.

Length

Four sessions over four weeks.

Dates

Mondays, November 16, 23, 30 and December 7 · 6–8 pm Pacific.

Cost

Free for this beta.

The course doesn't have its final name yet. This run is where it gets shaped.

Who it's for

If the essays feel like yours

The course is built for the reader of this site: analytical, reflective, practiced with frameworks — and beginning to suspect that the fluency itself is part of the problem. No philosophy background is needed. What's needed is a real problem you're willing to sit with, and some patience for being a beginner about your own experience.

Two honest fences: it isn't therapy, and it isn't a productivity system. It's a course — a structured way to learn one idea deeply, in the company of others learning it too.

Where it stands

This will be the first group

No cohort has run yet — this friends-and-family beta is the first. The material grows out of the same ground as the essays; the course form of it is new, and this page will keep saying so honestly. Early means unfinished. It also means a small group, close attention, and a hand in shaping what this becomes.