Mashed. Pressure – Notes from the Path.

Pressure seems to be the constant companion.

It shows up early now. A private school in England that politely asks children to leave if they don’t fit the academic mould. Elitism is still alive in the 21st century, just as AI begins to challenge what intelligence, capability, and contribution actually mean. I’m not sure the system has noticed yet. Or perhaps it has—and this is its way of protecting itself.

Pressure also shows up later. In the members of our community who, forty years on, are not chasing more, but trying to escape. Escape the noise. The expectations. The sense that life has been one long sprint with no clear finish line. There is simply too much of it.

I feel it in my own work. Rebuilding company lists after last week’s fortress. The pressure to design an efficient system—and then the quieter, heavier pressure underneath: will it work? Management by Columbus. Sailing west without proof. Running a system where uncertainty compounds faster than confirmation.

There are storm clouds I cannot control. Events I cannot influence, yet which land heavily and change everything. This has become a defining condition of my work—not mastery, but navigation.

Tuesday. Part two.

The weather keeps me inside. I’m not ready anyway. I have addresses. Fifty envelopes. The letter. A new pen. Everything is present, yet nothing is connected. When I cross-reference, I find mistakes. Gaps. Weaknesses.

So I change roles—from builder to tester.

As a tester, I realise what I have is rubbish. Which is oddly freeing. It means I can look for something better. My mindset shifts: I’m not going to be beaten by this. And that’s when it becomes interesting. Curiosity wakes up.

Courage turns into conviction.

I’ve embarked on this path now. All roads lead to Rome. I’ll get there eventually. Like Christopher Columbus—convinced that China lay to the west. He believed, sailed, and didn’t find what he was looking for. He found something else entirely. And that difference mattered far more, long after his lifetime.

That realisation gives me strength.

Friday. Part three.

In Peeling Potatoes today, Janita and I talked about belief, mindset, and the journey as the three components that carry you toward a goal. But only if you accept one thing upfront: the goal itself may be wrong. The path may lead somewhere better, somewhere you couldn’t have named at the start.

Belief—religious or otherwise—has always empowered people. Not because it guarantees outcomes, but because it removes paralysis. Conviction and courage don’t ensure correctness; they enable movement.

I see that same force at work in Brida. Janita and her husband believe in it. They invest time. Energy. Loyalty. Not because success is guaranteed, but because the work is worth standing behind. That’s how a team forms. And teams can survive changing destinations.

We will be successful—even if success ends up looking different from what we first imagined.

It reminds me that variety is the spice of life. Don’t stay in the rut. Look left. Look right.

I get thrown off course again when an AI tool gives me poetry and insights that turn out to be wrong. Several hours disappear before I realise it’s all built on sand. Back to the drawing board. Another recalibration.

It feels like a hurricane. One day I’m pushing forward through the storm. The next morning, I find myself in the eye of it. Calm. Stillness. All is okay.

Others can’t see that calm. The storm stands between us. But once they accept it—once they understand that I’m not avoiding the storm, but standing within it—something shifts. Respect deepens. Values evolve.

And then there’s the speedboat.

While I head west on my sailing ship—analog, slow, methodical, maps laid out, compass steady—others whizz past. Janita, thirty years younger, creates content, publishes it instantly, watches the metrics roll in. The sell-by date is instant too. She’s already gone while I’m still taking my next measured step.

Both approaches work. They can live side by side.

But for me, success lives in the path, not the outcome.

Because on the journey, things happen. Good things. Bad things. Unexpected things. If you reach the goal—what then? Another target appears. Another sprint begins.

We’ve become so goal-focused that we forget to notice the milestones in between. And with speed, the next goal always arrives faster than the last.

So I keep asking myself: what is more stressful? What is more calming? What actually makes people happier?

Everything I’m seeing suggests this: people are under pressure not because they lack direction, but because they move too fast to notice that they are already on a path worth walking.