Before San Francisco was known as the tech capital of the world, it was the city of the weirdos. Mischief in the city belonged to various communities: hippies, artists, scientists, pranksters, hackers. On surface, it might look like they were busy with different occupations; but at its root, these people were animated by the same playfulness and itch to question the rules. They also hung out at the same parties, shared intellectual references, and dated across friend groups. That cross-pollination, coupled with the mischief spirit, is what made the SF bay area so generative.1

The tech boom didn’t kill San Francisco’s soul by bringing tech to the city. It killed it by bringing normies in patagonia vests. The real loss ins’t art vs tech, it’s mischief vs conformity. The status players who would previously seek a stable career ladder in finance started studying CS. The very origin story of how tech as an industry started was forgotten. Steve Jobs, one of the fathers of this ecosystem, was immortalized as a difficult boss instead of a rebel who wanted to make tools for other rebels.

For my whole life, I dreamt of living surrounded with other rebels. As a child in France, I grew up making subversive art. Then, I dropped out of high school at 16 years old to build my own school (my first attempt at bringing rebels together). At 18, I had reached the ceiling of what my home country had to offer and went to travel the world. When I finally landed in San Francisco, I had heard tales about its mischievous history, and felt the cultural loss many people were raving about. Soon enough though, I also discovered that this lineage was kept alive in pockets of the city; and I got nerd-sniped into learning all about it.

One of my first findings was a book: Tales of The Cacophony Society.2 It retraces the history of the legendary SF-based prankster group, active from the 80s up to around the 2000. One of my favorite pranks started by Cacophony Society (and which has become a yearly tradition since) is the salmon run: in 1994, during the bay-to-breakers run, a few of the group’s members crashed the run costumed as salmons, and started running in the opposite direction. The reason why I love it so much beyond the fun, is for the well fitted metaphor of SF’s weirdo culture: the most creative people are always going against the current of what everybody else is doing and thinking about.

I ended up cold-emailing one of the leaders of Cacophony Society and got coffee with him. He generously shared anecdotes about this era, his take on the philosophy behind prank culture, and I promised myself I’d write a proper interview of him soon.

I also read Season of the Witch, a popular book on the history of San Francisco. A small detail in one of the chapters led me to discover hundreds of letters written by runaway teens in the 70s who were trying to make their way to hippie San Francisco. After seeing the praises my blog post on this research received, I realized people craved for more of these stories. Our world has become much, much more boring than it used to be, for better or for worse.3

It led me to believe that San Francisco might be ready for a new era, inspired by the mischievous and creative tales of its own past. Technologists and artists, together, are part of this mischievous/ prankster lineage, and I’d love to see more people own it; and I think that will come with reminding them of those great stories.

So my current-side project is to document the mischievous history of San Francisco; I have a series of blog posts lined up, a couple of events I’d like to host, and I’m also building an online archives of pranks in the SF bay area.

If someone is interested in sponsoring this work, I’d love to chat! I’m at zeldapoem@gmail.com. Let us not be won over by conformity; let us inspire the next generation of mischief.

Thanks to Eugene Angelo for the conversation that helped me put this post together.

3

Experimental History

The Decline of Deviance

People are less weird than they used to be. That might sound odd, but data from every sector of society is pointing strongly in the same direction: we’re in a recession of mischief, a crisis of conventionality, and an epidemic of the mundane. Deviance is on the decline…

Read more

6 months ago · 9762 likes · 636 comments · Adam Mastroianni

But along the way, scrappiness stopped being a tool and became my identity. I started treating scarcity like a proof of character: not paying myself, not resting, not asking for help, doing everything alone. In startups, this posture is easy to romanticize.

The thing is, scrappiness can only take you so far: you can’t build something durable, let alone scale it, if you aren’t giving yourself permission to receive and spend the resources needed to get there.

I’m writing this as I reflect on 2025, a year that looked, from the outside, like a string of wins. I launched Nautilus. I went on a tour, giving lectures in universities across Europe while scouting for talent. I got my O-1 visa and moved to San Francisco. I raised money, found a space to host the Nautilus’ cohorts, and launched the first batch which turned into a great success.

And yet, alongside the pride, I’m feeling frustrated:

At what point did I convince myself that in order to grow my org, I had to sacrifice my entire wellbeing?

That question is uncomfortable because the answer isn’t “because I had to.” Not fully. Yes, some early sacrifices are real, and starting something from scratch demands focus, trade-offs, and intensity.

But in my case, sacrifice became a belief system.

In tech, there’s a version of founder virtue that gets rewarded: the martyr founder. The one who sacrifices everything for the mission. The one who is always grinding, always “in it,” always barely making it, always proving they want it badly enough. This mindset leaks into how you schedule your life, how you hire, how you collaborate, how you plan, how you fundraise, how you lead.

Grind creates momentum. But it can also turn into tunnel vision, strategic mistakes, and burnout.

I was making my life harder than it needed to be because I unconsciously thought struggling was noble.

My work is the most important thing in my life. And I realized that my scarcity mindset has become a liability to building something that lasts. Nautilus can’t be built from scarcity, when its mission is to support artists, scientists, and founders exit survival mode to build the future.

So in 2026, I’m updating my inner software. Concretely, it looks like:

Tempo

• Stop manufacturing urgency. Build ambitious but realistic timelines, and honor them.

• Catch myself when I think “I don’t have time”, and start feeling like “I am rich in time”, while being more deliberate with my day-to-day.

Receiving

• Pay myself. Let the project support the person building it.

• Spend what’s needed to do things well, instead of defaulting to “make it work” at any cost.

Collaboration

• Share unfinished work earlier, and invite feedback instead of performing independence.

• Build with peers more: co-create and make room for partnership.

Capacity

• Train my body for higher energy and focus.

• Protect my fun as a primary need and creative input.

• Create space for resting every single week.

Survival mode got me here. Now, it’s time for the abundance arc.

Thanks to Isabel and Zack for the many conversations on this subject, and to Cate for publishing an essay on burnout here + great convo on the matter.

I’ve been reading Season of the Witch, a fantastic book on the history of San Francisco from the 1960s through the 80s. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a chapter on Huckleberry House, a home for runaways started in the late 60s. It was just a couple pages, but it stuck with me.

There was something about the story of the founder, a reverend turned hippie, who decided to help teens when everyone else had given up on them. It resonated with my own life story and motivations for building Nautilus, my non-profit.

Of course, my first instinct was to look the house up, hoping to answer my many questions:

• Who were these kids?

• What was it like to live in this house, in this era?

• Who was the founder – is he still around?

• Is the house open to this day?

While skimming through the house’s Wikipedia page, I discovered that archives on its history were available at the main library of San Francisco, including:

The ACTUAL letters exchanged between teen runaways and the house’s founder during the 60s!

I can’t explain the rush of adrenaline that gave me.

At that point, it felt like I had two options: either I was going to impulsively go to the library that very same day and get to the bottom of my curiosity, or I would forget about it and move on.

Like many of us, I’m busy, so my mind started to come up with all the reasons not to go. Waste of time. I got meetings. Very unproductive way to spend a Tuesday. Seriously, like, what’s even the point?

Luckily, I was able to break through this stream of thought and realize that I aspire to be a high agency individual who is free to follow her curiosity.

So, just like that, I went.

It was my first time at the San Francisco Public library. Most people there seemed to be using the building for everything but reading: charging their phone, using the restroom, or just resting from the chaos of the streets. I headed to the 6th floor where the special collection is located.

When the staff looked up Huckleberry house, they didn’t just find a few documents, but actual boxes, including photos, too.

The boxes were in an off-site storage, so I had to place an order. It felt oddly formal for such an impulsive curiosity. Fill out a form. Leave my name. Wait 10 days for the boxes to be shipped to the library. By then the side quest had become too meaningful to back out of, so I just went with it.

Ten days later, I was back on the sixth floor. The special collection section is a big room, but I was alone with the staff for most of the afternoon. They kept my ID and my belongings in a locker, and gave me gloves to handle the photographs. There was something ritualistic about the whole process.

I opened the first box: letters. Hundreds of them.

These were handwritten letters from teenagers addressed to Larry Beggs, the founder and director of Huckleberry house. I was struck by how long some of these were. Literally pages and pages of stories and difficulties these teens were going through back home, their desire to run away, and questions about the Huckleberry house.

I also found copies of the replies to these letters. Larry’s letters are written carefully, and you can feel that he takes those teens seriously. When teens write about suicidal thoughts, he doesn’t jump into advice or pretend to know their life better than they do. He often says some version of: I don’t have enough context to tell you what to do. But I’m listening. I care that you exist.

Reading through these letters got me thinking about what the lives of these people ended up looking like. Most of the correspondence was exchanged between 1967 and 1969. And here I was, 50-plus years later, holding pieces of paper on which they poured their heart out of desperation.

The librarians assumed I was working on some kind of academic project. At one point, one of them asked me what my research was for and which university I was at. The funny thing is, I am a high school dropout – And I had no reason to be here other than pure vibes.

Later that afternoon, I started talking to the photography curator. I told her I found my way there through the book Season of the Witch. She smiled and told me that David Talbot, the author, had spent weeks in that exact same room, looking at the same documents, helped by the same staff.

There was something touching about that too: the idea that a book sends you to the archives, and that you end up literally tracing the author’s footsteps.

By the time I left, it felt like I had stepped into a time travel machine that sent me into a parallel San Francisco. But there was also a strange continuity with the city I moved to in 2025:

Today, young builders from all over the world cold-email successful tech founders, trying to make their way to San Francisco to build the future. Back then, teens wrote these long letters to Rev. Beggs, someone they similarly looked up to, and also hoping to make their way to San Francisco for a different future.

If there is a lesson to this side quest, it’s certainly this: you can JUST go to the library (or do things, in general). The world is full of rooms like that sixth-floor reading room, and it’s up to you to walk into them. Work usually can wait, and you often come back more inspired to it when you’ve given yourself permission to wander.

Just go on that quest!

Yes, Huckleberry house is still around and with the same mission. If you want to donate to support at-risk teens who find refuge there, you can do so here.

If you want to donate or collaborate on Nautilus, the non-profit I founded that welcomes young artists, scientists and founders to SF and help them do work that shapes the future, get in touch at zeldapoem@gmail.com

Dear young polymath,

This is the seventh installment of a series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. We bring you here, fully funded, to do the thing most people never get to do: go all in on becoming yourself.

Which brings us to the theme of this dinner:

Are you authentically you?

It sounds kind of cliché at first, but I promise it’s not. Being yourself, really you, and practicing that in the real world is harder than most people will ever admit. It’s even harder when you’re quirky, creative, or ambitious—because the world wants to shape you before you even get a chance to figure out who you are.

So how do you hold onto your strangeness in a uniform world? You meet someone like Pasquale D'Silva. He’s the founder of Illusion of Life, a whimsical creative lab that “births new characters.” He’s building a theme park in New York City—yes, seriously—with a magic Scottish dog named Spark who lives in a quantum portal inside a yellow tin briefcase.

The first time I saw him, Spark’s case was handcuffed to a bookshelf in the Nautilus library—and I immediately thought: oh, this is going to be good. Pasquale worked at Warner Bros. At 14, where people assumed he was just the coffee boy. But he wasn’t there to serve lattes. He was there to learn magic.

What followed was a dinner unlike any other. Here’s what I learned about keeping it real from the man with a dog in a quantum portal:

I. Say “Yes, and…”

Pasquale got to where he is now by living the philosophy of improv.

“There’s momentum between your choices. The more you say yes, the more things accelerate.”

For him, “yes and” means being in flow with your intuition. Let your feelings lead you instead of your fear. Great things don’t come from rigid plans, they come from increasing the surface area of serendipity.

That’s how he decides who to work with: “Are you cool? Can we talk about life? Can we vibe?”

Pasquale assured us that life is positive-sum. That flow states are contagious because energy travels faster than logic. He chases feelings the way others chase certainty. Is that chaotic at times? Yes. But there's wisdom there because having conviction over a truth and having momentum will lead you to more opportunities than following a 5-year plan.

II. Pay attention

Are you awake to catch the wave when it hits you?

Most people aren’t – most people are asleep. Not literally, but spiritually. They move through life like NPCs in a game they didn’t design. Pasquale reminded us to snap out of that:

“There’s no requirement to perform.”

You don’t have to rehearse before you speak. Just reach the person on the other side of the matrix. Say something real. Be someone real. Why? Because emotions and feelings are real, and in our culture people are dying to feel something.

Pasquale told us his favorite actor was Robin Williams—because Robin was a master of attention. A magician who could pull vibes out of thin air. A performer who felt deeply and channeled it into characters.

“Artists work in planes of completely irrational thought,” Pasquale said.

“Their job is to feel stuff.”

When he said that, I realized: The real job of a polymath isn’t to be “right” or “successful.”
It’s to feel deeply, and transmit that into form.

That’s how you know you’re alive: you’re turning inspiration into creation or expression.

III. Practice magic

Magic is a real thing. Magic is what happens when something touches your inner child before your adult mind can explain it away. Magic radiates. You feel it.

“Magic works instantly for kids,” Pasquale said.

“But for adults, you have to work to activate their inner child.”

That’s the goal of his work with Spark. Spark isn’t just a Scottish dog. He’s a portal to wonder. Someone at dinner said this after meeting Spark:

“Usually when people demo things I try to dissect to see how it works but with spark I didn’t care how it works because I was looking at a cool scottish dog in a quantum portal”

That’s what real magic does. It disarms your skepticism. It invites you to feel before you analyze. Animation is magic. Pasquale reminded us that animation literally works because of the persistence of vision—you flash enough images and your brain believes they’re alive. That’s what art is supposed to do. And of course, technology is your wand. Use it to close the gap between imagination and reality.

“Saying “yes and” helps me surf the wave of magic,” Pasquale said.

“Magic comes from people. And every day feels like play.”

So what’s the takeaway, young polymath?

Be real as fuck.
Say “yes and” to things that scare you.
Stop performing.
Increase serendipity.
Chase feelings.
Birth art.
And let the world meet the unique, weird, passion-filled version of you that you usually keep hidden.

The world needs your truth. Not your polished pitch.

We’re saving you a seat at dinner. Apply to Nautilus’ next cohort.

With magic and momentum,

MacKenzie Fisher

Dear young polymath,

This is the sixth installment of a series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.

This dinner was with Yaroslav, the founder of PlasticList. PlasticList is a consumer-led research project that focuses on testing food products for the presence of plastic-related chemicals, particularly those that leach from packaging. Their findings revealed that 86% of food samples tested in the Bay Area contained detectable levels of plastic chemicals.

I. “You can either keep accumulating patterns or break them.”

That’s what Yaroslav told us somewhere between sips of chamomile tea, and it struck me how that’s the best articulation of why some people end up making such distinctive choices apart from their environment.

Most people spend their lives accumulating patterns. School gives you patterns. Culture gives you patterns. You mimic your parents, your professors, your feeds’ patterns. And if you’re lucky, you get really good at those borrowed scripts the world gives you. But what if the real game isn’t in mimicking reality… but creating it?

Yaroslav was born and raised in Siberia. The first movie he remembers watching, iRobot, was at a theater in St. Petersburg. That film, with its AI-powered future and synthetic imagination, lodged itself in his child mind.

From there and beyond, he started breaking patterns. He learned English through Eminem lyrics.

He won the U.S. green card lottery—yes, the literal lottery. But don’t mistake his luck for being his recipe. Instead of taking out loans, he stacked grants and scholarships which covered his tuition to the University of Michigan.

II. “I felt home-less everywhere I went… but I learned to live at home within myself.”

Yaroslav left Siberia at age seventeen. That’s when the movement began. Michigan, New York, Discord servers, underground lab negotiations—he just kept moving. But internally, he was still searching.

He told us that he was homesick for five years. But what he taught us through that anecdote wasn’t how to return home. It was how to become the home we are looking for. He did that by creating a family with his wife in America.

That kind of sovereignty is hard-won. Especially when you don’t belong to any dominant place. Yaroslav didn’t feel he was fully home back in Siberia, nor in America. He felt foreign. And he felt that everywhere. Many of us in Nautilus relate to that sentiment as some people are third culture, some have complex relationships with their nations, and some are nomadic…

But Yarsolav taught us all how to synthesize from outsider to originator.

This feeling of being out of place is familiar to many polymaths. You might be feeling it too – it’s not a flaw. It’s fertile soil that pushes you to shape things that don't exist yet. And that’s what Yaroslav did with PlasticList.

III. “I didn’t even know chemistry. I used Claude.”

PlasticList was born out of following the zeitgeist. Microplastics were trending across newsfeeds, research journals, and comment sections. The public wanted answers. So after Yaroslav saw a tweet from Nat Friedman he decided to build something that tests plastic in everyday items—transparently and publicly.

But there was a problem.

He didn’t know chemistry. He wasn’t part of any institution. He didn’t have the credentials.

People told him: “You’re not the right kind of person to work on this.”

And still, he and his team kept trying. They called over 100 labs. Most told him to come back in two years. His project timeline was two weeks. Luckily, he ended up finding the right partners and got to work. Then, when it came time to understand the chemical data… He asked Claude what connections between datasets were.

AI has lowered the barrier to entry for solving problems from experts to anyone being able to make an impact in an area they want to. The same AI tools that trained Yaroslav in enough chemistry to test data for PlasticList are now training a new generation of polymaths to learn real, cross-applicable, technical insight.

PlasticList ended up taking 7 months instead of 2 weeks. They hit every wall imaginable. But they kept going.

Yaroslav told us, “I have faced obstacles where there was no path out. But that’s the nature of a real problem.” He didn’t change his posture—he just persisted. That’s what separates true builders from phonies.

Too many people cling to appearances. They flaunt their phonebooks, their ego feeds around mutuals, and confuse proximity to power with doing something powerful. Behind closed doors, though, there’s no action—because doing the hard, unglamorous things doesn’t preserve the image. But real problems don’t care about status. And real builders, like Yaroslav, don’t either. He and his team tested expired Korean War food. Publicly called out companies. They created a muscle for testing what others were too scared to touch. Eventually, it got Nat Friedman’s attention and a partnership blossomed:

“I wanted to work with Nat, but more than anything else, I was making PlasticList for the community and for myself. One person is never your only gateway.”

Don’t build for virality. Build because it matters. Don’t build for access. Ask people and build relationships with those who see you. And scale because you can’t not.

We’re saving you a seat at dinner. Apply to Nautilus’ next cohort.

Yours very truly,

MacKenzie Fisher

Dear young polymath,

This is the fifth installment of a series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.

Did you know you can just prompt the experience you want?

You’ve probably seen the meme: “You can just do things.” But Sasha Chapin— famous writer, former musician, and professional lore-generator taught us something deeper over dinner.

You can just prompt the world to respond to you differently, simply by behaving differently within it. We talked about identity, scripts, systems, silliness, and the underrated power of choosing to write your own story.

I. You can just retire versions of yourself

Sasha opened the evening with some lore: his early days chasing a career in music. He loved writing songs and performing. He worked hard to become a good musician. He believed he had a future in it. And for a long time, that belief sustained him. But then a quiet knowing began to stir—first an idea, then a truth he couldn’t ignore.

He was a good musician. But not great. And more importantly: he realized he was lying to himself.

“For one, I could just feel that people weren’t as into me as other artists. And I knew… if I worked really, really hard, maybe I could one day open for Tame Impala.”

That wasn’t enough to quit. Eventually, a friend told him what he already knew:

“Your music is good. But your writing? That’s special.”

So he pivoted and retired a version of himself. He let one dream die so another could breathe. That’s terrifying, but also freeing. Most of us are haunted by outdated versions of ourselves so consider this your permission to dive deeper into what resonates most, to grieve previous parts of ourselves in order to grow into who we really are.

II. You can just break script

This was the most fun part of the dinner. Because what is polymathy about, if not learning to mess with the world’s formulas?

Before Sasha was a celebrated writer, before the music gigs and award winning essays—he was a waiter at a fine dining restaurant. Now, you might think, what can waiting tables teach you about narrative power? Always assume the answer to these questions is everything! Sasha introduced us to a concept he calls responsiveness—the capacity to sense impact. Most systems are unresponsive. They don't care what you do. You clock in, clock out. You write the essay, get the grade. You say hello, and the world doesn’t even see you.

But Sasha argued that even if a system is unresponsive, you don’t have to be. You can bring life into the system.

By breaking the script. For example, instead of mechanically asking his customers, “Still, tap, or sparkling?”, Sasha would pretend he forgot how to ask. The awkwardness was the point—it invited presence and space for connection through creating friction.

He told us about the time he spilled olive oil on a woman’s skirt. (*cue collective gasp and chuckle*)

And yet, she still tipped him big. Why? He told her,

“Sorry, I was distracted by how special you are"

I thought to myself, Who even says that? But I guess Sasha does—and it works for him, because he breaks the script! It’s not about being reckless; it’s about play, and about re-enchanting the moments most people sleepwalk through.

When you start behaving differently, people have to respond. They get curious. They open up.

So learn how to prompt yourself to break script.

III. You can just be silly

Why are we so serious all the time?

Why do we grip so tightly, try so hard to be profound, to be right, to look impressive?

What if you just let go? What if you laughed at yourself first?

Sasha taught us: you can just be silly. Being silly helps you feel things.

You can be silly by breaking script but also through the realization:

“People are not your experience of them.”

That quote hit different for me because we like to think we know others; but all we really know is how they feel to us through our own lens: meaning at that moment, in that context, and in our timeline. Silliness is his strategy to loosen that grip onto reality, and to allow feelings and emotions to be felt instead of locking them in a box.

“When I stop trying to fight fear, rejection, pain and just feel them—it’s kind of electric.”

We also talked about Jonathan Haidt’s “elephant and rider” metaphor: your emotional brain (the elephant) and your rational brain (the rider). When those two are out of sync—you suffer. You drag your body around, confused and exhausted. So be silly.

Let the elephant dance. That’s how you sync up your rider and elephant again.

IV. You can just pick up the pen

So now, young polymath—here’s your pen:

(pull one out IRL if you don’t live within the Substack codebase lol)

You’ve read this letter, but what do you do next? How do you start prompting what you want?

Ask Yourself:

• What version of yourself needs to be retired?

• What script have you been handed that no longer serves you?

• Why so serious? Where could you be a little more… silly?

Write your own lines for you. Prompt your own world for you.

We’re saving you a seat at dinner. Apply to Nautilus’ next cohort.

Yours very truly,

MacKenzie Fisher

Dear young polymath,

This is the fourth installment of a series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.

Tonight, we had the privilege of hosting Anjan Katta, Founder and CEO of Daylight, at Casa Nautilus. From the moment he walked in I noticed there was nothing performative about his presence; he was here to connect and effortlessly remembered everyone’s name at the dinner table within 10 minutes. That wasn’t just some networking trick, I would later find him to be the most kind and unique CEO I’ve ever met…

As a GenZ Girardian, I often run an experiment when I meet people in tech. I ask myself: “Who are they mimicking? Gates? Jobs? Zuck?” For Anjan, as the CEO of a computer company, I admit I was looking for any "Jobs" within him. I’m genuinely excited to say that I saw only Anjan Katta, so much so I told him:

“Hi Anjan. Nice to officially meet you.”

This is rarer than it should be, but the tech space has way more blind copies than “n of 1”s. At the end of tea time, Anjan told us his favorite parable. Maybe you’ve heard it before:

A farmer’s only horse runs away.
The neighbors say, “This is such bad news!”
The farmer says, “We’ll see.”

The horse returns with twenty wild horses.

“Such good news!” They cry.
“We’ll see,” says the farmer.

His son breaks both legs taming one horse.

“Tragic,” the neighbors say.
“We’ll see.”

Then a war breaks out. Every able-bodied son is drafted—except the farmer’s.

“You must be so happy,” the neighbors say.
The farmer repeats, “We’ll see.”

This parable became the way I was able to process the entire night with Anjan. Every insight he shared echoed these truths:

I. Give up, don’t quit

(The horse runs away.)

Every founder experiences loss and failure. A failed launch. Broken product. An investor ghosting you. Your instinct might be to panic and fix whatever needs fixing to win.

Anjan wants you to think critically: “There’s a difference between stress and strain.”

In physics, stress is a temporary force, but strain is what permanently bends or deforms you. When the horse runs away, many would spiral into despair, but not the farmer. He says, “We’ll see.” The key is not to avoid stress, but to be flexible enough to move through it without letting it bend your spirit.

He’s been there before. Anjan’s point is that “giving up” means letting the soil settle, and then coming back better.

Think of the Chinese finger trap:

“The harder you pull, the more stuck you get. When you soften and get loose, you slide free.”

This ability to soften and surrender — without abandoning the mission — is what allows you to keep playing long enough to succeed. So when things appear to be falling apart, just say to yourself, “we’ll see”. That’s the farmer losing his horse. It looks like a disaster, but only time can reveal its true shape.

Your job isn’t to label the moment as a win or loss.
Your job is to endure and keep moving forward.

II. Surrender to Intuition Over Ego

(The horses return.)

Suddenly, you’ve got 21 horses. A big break. Press attention. A wave of users. Investors are dm-ing you. Validation feels good.

What could go wrong…?

(Son breaks his leg.)

The farmer is unfazed. Even if we don’t get broken legs often, we suffer in some form:

Anjan was vulnerable and shared, “Depression was my teacher. It humbled me. I had to surrender my desire to control reality.”

This surrender became central to how he built Daylight – Like the farmer, Anjan uses his intuition as his compass.

“Computers should feel different to your eyes and to your headspace.”

That’s why he used to demo Daylight as many as 30 people a day, to get people to feel it.

But even then, setbacks will always happen so surrender.

Anjan said:

“Things have to get worse to get better. We’re not trying to win. Just trying to get from basecamp to basecamp.”

III. Sow Daily

(The draft comes. The son is spared.)

Daylight isn’t your typical startup. They build at the pace of amplifying human potential, what computers were supposed to do:

“Other companies aren’t starting from scratch and working backwards for humanity. We are.”

They raise bit by bit.
They build feeling by feeling.
They avoid the Venom-like symbiosis between humans and their devices that other startups normalize.

“We used to wait for letters. Now we text before we’ve regulated our emotions.”

Their goal isn’t to dominate as fast as possible. It’s to slowly deprogram.

(The final “we’ll see.” of the parable)

For three years, Anjan sent emails every two months to a dream collaborator.
No reply. For three years. Then one day he got his yes.

This collaborator now helps power Daylight.

“People are really nice if you email them,” he smiled.

We forget this when things go quiet. When all of our horses run away.

But Anjan reminds us:

You can give up, but don’t quit! Whether you’re losing your horses, dealing with an injured son, or avoiding war…

You need to hold your horses haha (as my Ma used to tell me)

Don’t try and force an outcome.
Don’t narrate your life in past tense when you're still mid-chapter.

Stay human, and just say: We’ll see.

Check out Anjan’s Favorite Song Lately here.

We’re saving you a seat at dinner: apply to Nautilus’ next cohort.

Yours very truly,

MacKenzie Fisher

Dear young polymath,

This is the third installment of a new series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.

Have you ever heard a scientist answer a question saying, "I don’t fucking know," with laughter in their voice?

Meet Josie Zayner. She’s not your average PhD scientist. She’s a biohacker, artist, and a rebel who recodes DNA like it’s art. She’s best known for pioneering self-experimentation and democratizing access to genetic engineering (including CRISPR). Now, she's CEO of The Odin and The Los Angeles Project, dedicating her life to pushing the boundaries of biology, art, and human potential. Sitting across from her at dinner felt like being handed a lightning rod.

Josie believes we’re more than we think we are. She envisions a future where humanity transcends its current form.

"Imagine telling someone from the 1800s that we would later shoot rockets into space and make sand think. They’d see us as Gods and on some level I can't imagine that humans in the future wouldn’t create worlds with different math and physics."

She believes we are amateur gods. And to tap into that power, we must go deeper; ten layers deeper.

I. Go Deeper

For Josie, the path to profound insight lies in going “10 layers deeper” than others. This confrontation is central to her creative process:

"Get to the edge of the abyss, and see what you pull out when you look past it."

The Abyss encapsulates the emotional vertigo of realizing you don’t know what you’re capable of yet – Josie isn’t afraid of this feeling; she dives straight into it.

In a competitive world of 8 billion people, going deep isn't just curiosity, it's a strategic necessity.

To do this, here's an exercise to help you critically reflect. Ask yourself why five times. Each “why” peels back a layer of noise until you hit something real. Why did that project fail? Why do I want this outcome? Why am I afraid to start? Five “whys” and you’re suddenly not solving problems at the surface level—you’re going 10 layers beyond most people.

What is your truth? Where do you want to go? What pieces do you need to move to get there?

You can’t fake going 10 layers deep. Maybe 1, maybe 5. But true creativity and authenticity comes from being so in touch with yourself that your creation could only have come from you.

II. Build Worlds

Josie doesn’t just want to engineer DNA or build companies. She wants to build worlds.

To her, being a creator is what makes us human. It means not waiting for permission. It means making something only you could make, and putting it out there even if you don’t feel ready.

“Don’t be afraid. Just put it out there—whatever it is, however it is—and hope for the best. You have to press the gas pedal as hard as you can and take advantage of all the opportunities you have.”

She reminded us that nobody changes the world by accident. Those who bend the arc of reality dedicate their lives to it. She calls it “the illness”. World-building starts with saying yes to yourself, to risk, to the act of creating. It’s not just about being right, but also about knowing what you’re on Earth in your timeline to do:

“When I die, I want to be content on my deathbed. I want to know there’s nothing else I could imagine or want to do. If an alien came to Earth and said, ‘Find me someone who really lived,’ I hope that would be me.”

Every morning, nihilism and depression might try to come knocking at your door. It is up to you to look them in the eye and say: I know what I’m here to do.

III. Questions Polymaths Should Ask Themselves

During our dinner, Josie asked us questions we’ll never forget:

1. What do you find beautiful? How do you become the creator of that beauty? Let yourself be moved by things, and go on to add beauty onto the world.

2. What would keep you constantly entertained if someone locked you in solitary confinement for the rest of your life? What poems would you make from rocks? Or songs would you write in your head? Once you’ve found that, you’ve found your thing.

3. How do you practice being the most real version of yourself to other people? How do you not be afraid to fail and be cringe?

One thing about Miss Josie Zayner: she’s unapologetically herself. She walked into dinner in a black fire tutu dress, gold Melissa slippers, and the coolest haircut I’ve ever seen a scientist rock!

So don’t be like Josie, be yourself! Don’t wait for permission. Go 10 layers deep. Express something only you could.

What will you do next with the lightning rod in your hands? Come figure it out during Nautilus’ next cohort. Apply here.

Yours very truly,

MacKenzie Fisher

Cover image: Detail of Marie among the Elves, by Eduard Steinbrück, 1840

Dear polymath,

This is the second installment of a new series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.

Did you create a masterpiece today?

Spending the evening with Farza, I was immediately intrigued by his pragmatic approach to building masterpieces. There's a fierce energy about him, rooted in action, and an interesting philosophy for navigating the often-messy journey of creation and communion.

For those who don't know him, Farza is a guy who loves creating things for others. Whether it's selling Dragon Ball Z games on eBay at 13, building experimental apps for gamers, or even launching ZipSchool, which taught 150,000 kids online, his journey is a masterclass on building. Most recently, he founded buildspace— previously the world’s largest school for creators. He’s now in the early days of working on a new product with his friend Sharif.

I left the night with three core principles that underpin his success in building masterpieces:

I. Embracing the cycle of W’s and L’s

“Movement is better than no movement.” That was Farza’s first and loudest principle. Most people obsess over results—viral tweets, big launches, and metrics that feel good. But not Farza, he focuses only on the inputs. He wants to know: Did I ship something today? Did I move? Did I learn?

He calls this the cycle of W’s and L’s. Not wins and losses in the usual sense of material outcomes, but a cycle of effort and feedback. This is the process of compounding that informs which direction to grow in.

“I'd rather take 100 Ls than sit around waiting for a perfect W.”

Each attempt builds the reflexes that let larger masterpieces emerge naturally, over time.

For legends like Michael Jordan, it’s easy to know if he's won the game or not (he can see whether or not the ball goes in the hoop). But for builders, there are so many metrics that make it hard to identify what event or action truly mattered in the grand scheme of it all. The way Farza optimizes for this is by setting the goal to create a masterpiece each day – something that makes him feel like the day was well spent.

One masterpiece each day. That’s the rule. Even if it’s small. Even if no one sees it.

II. Consume to be inspired

What I found particularly intriguing was his approach to consumption. I noticed his website features a content list. So I asked him why he chose to share content over books, and he shamelessly admitted that he doesn't actually enjoy books that much, but he absolutely loves consuming other forms of media. YouTube. TikTok. Music. Movies. Then he uses what inspires him in his work.

He shared an example that his vlogging style was actually inspired by watching PewDiePie. When hiring videographers was once frowned upon in tech, despite many side-eyes, he prioritized hiring one anyway (the great Joshua Bonzo!). Not only is this now standard, but it's cool to do and it was all due to Farza following what was true to him based on what inspired him in the past. Lately, he’s been into boiler room sets so you better believe the energy for the next product launch will be hype!

The lesson here isn’t about what you consume; the call to action isn’t to go watch PewDiePie to try and simulate Farza's success. It’s to consume things with intention and relation.

Ask yourself: What moves me? Why? How can I remix this? Or add it to my work?

Good artists steal, and talented polymaths make the strange seem obvious in hindsight. This is what polymaths do best. They cross-pollinate.

III. Build your council, and your EQ

One thing Farza kept coming back to is the importance of people. Not only being kind. Not only being present. But having a higher level of trusted peers who can keep you in check. He first told us about his co-founder, Sharif, and how their bond is built on aligned philosophies. And how he’s built his own “council,” people he turns to for truth when his mind gets too noisy.

“You need people who tell you when you’re full of shit—and still love you after.”

That’s the magic that bonds us at Nautilus: our peers make up our council. We go on walks together when we’re stuck and ask each other “Am I crazy?” – and listen. And we learn to grow more confident in our intuition as much as course-correcting when we’re proven wrong. These friendships are priceless; being picked up by someone when you’re lost about what to do or who you are is a blessing.

Farza reminded us that building is most fulfilling as a team sport. It’s a living, breathing daily practice. If you show up everyday, track your inputs, turn your consumption into inspiration, and build your council—you’ll not only build amazing products. You’ll build great masterpieces.

Come build your masterpiece with us: apply to the next Nautilus cohort.

Yours very truly,

MacKenzie Fisher, Philosofounder and a Nautilus protege.
Sign up to my publication here.

Dear polymath,

This is the first installment of a new series where we share insights from guests at Casa Nautilus. Nautilus is a 3-month residency for young polymaths. Proteges’ stay in SF is fully funded with accommodation, food and equipment included, so they can dive into their craft and build ambitious projects.

Can you ever pay enough attention?

We walk into our home each day, but how did it become one? There are evenings that remind us why we build these strange, beautiful homes like the one we live in—not for shelter alone, but for encounters.

One such evening unfolded last week, when we welcomed Maxime Peroumal to have dinner with us. Maxime built the world’s most popular open-source VR headset at 15 from the countryside in France; at 16, he was dropping out of high school to build his first company, Unison. Today based in San Francisco, he is working on a new AI & Hardware stealth company.

Polymath and self-proclaimed hardware philosopher, he’s known for designing systems that feel inevitable, for building with elegance and speed, and for never waiting for permission.

If you had been there, I think you would have seen it too: the mind of someone who listens faster than most people think. There was no posturing, no thesis or institution to defend—only an analytical, roving curiosity that kept returning to a radical theme: becoming n of 1.

What stuck with me were three coordinates worth returning to as you build:

I. The origin of things

Maxime has a reverence for systems so well-designed we no longer notice them — chairs, glass cups, stop signs. Things we touch and use every day without ever asking: how did this get here?

Think about the clothes you’re wearing right now. Before the Industrial Revolution, women made garments for their families by hand. Mass manufacturing made clothing so commonplace that we rarely consider the complex system that brings it to us, or how it freed women for other pursuits. Similarly, the cups we drink from were once individually hand-blown and crafted over hundreds of years before becoming mass-produced, virtually invisible parts of our daily routine.

“The best engineers of their time worked on the things we now take for granted, although incredibly hard to make. We don’t even know the name of these people anymore.”

Study the history, and understand the how.

II. Become “n of 1” in life

We asked Maxime about institutions, how he views his work in the eyes of others, and whether he chased their approval. He smiled and said:

“If I try to build for others I feel paralyzed, so the only thing I know how to do is build the things I like.”

There was a conviction in himself that being technically right and emotionally clear is a more reliable compass than any credential. He called it being your own “n of 1”—being so unique that the set defining you contains only one element: you. If you're a founder, that set might include 100,000; if you're an engineer, maybe a few million. But the goal is to resist any generic categorization until what's left is just you. Build and create things for yourself. Solve your own problems. Delight your own taste. Move at your own tempo. If it resonates with you, it will likely resonate with others. But even if it doesn’t, you’ve already made something real that one person in the world truly wants: you.

Now, if your ambition is to build things that become mainstream, his advice doesn’t stop there. Maxime shared a great framework to think about whether or not something has the potential to scale:

1. Usability – Can others intuitively use it? Is it functional in their life?
2. Visibility – Do they have access to it? Do they know it exists?
3. Mimetic Influence – Do they want to be part of it because others are? Does it signify something about them?

III. Curating your people

Maxime told us he has sent around 5,000 cold emails since he was a teen. His most meaningful collaborators? All came from cold emails. The life he lives now began as a blank subject line. So he encouraged us to put ourselves out there, but to do it strategically.

Maxime offered us a playbook for reaching out to people with little incentive to help: Start by offering insight on their work. Ask them better questions. Contribute an insight they haven’t heard before. To do that, he told us that at times he’ll spend an entire day studying someone’s work to craft them a very thoughtful email. The care you pour into it will make a difference.

But more than connection and outreach, Maxime also talked about curation:

“I found that I’m much more successful by focusing on finding the right people than trying to change others .”

Whether you’re hiring, collaborating, or making friends—knowing how to recognize people who already move the way you do is key. These are people who will challenge your behavior and push back against ideas, but also work in the same direction as you.

If you had been at dinner that night…

You would’ve also heard about:

• An anecdote about Pascal’s scams and their danger (blogpost)

• The link between mimetic theory and glowing Apple logos (blogpost)

• How Taleb’s Black Swans predict globalization's forecasted demise (book)

But most of all, you would’ve heard someone who speaks with the same wisdom and focus he builds with: nothing left uninvestigated.

Stay building and apply to Nautilus’ next cohort.

Yours very truly,

Cover image: Detail of Neptune and Amphitrite, by Cornelis Van Haarlem, 1583

Nautilus’ founding cohort is going strong! We are so excited to connect with you at the many events coming up in July and August:

Sign up for our July events

July 12 – culture 4 techbros

Sign up here. Hosted by MacKenzie and Igor at Alamo Square

Come vibe with us in the park! MacKenzie and Igor will be playing live R&B, soul, and Brazilian jazz.

July 13 – Third Culture Jam

Limited spots, sign up here. Hosted by Sommaiya at Casa Nautilus

Exclusive concert by Sommaiya Angrish, alongside specialty coffee brewed by Neel from Anecdote and deep conversations with people who resonate with the concept of third culture.

July 26 – SF Cybernetics Symposium + Anecdote Coffee

Sign up here. Hosted by Igor and Neel at Casa Nautilus

Why do feedback loops shape our brains and societies? How can systems be aware of themselves? What happens when they do?

Cybernetics drives how nature learns, how societies govern, and how minds reflect on themselves. Here, we’ll discuss how this happens, while enjoying the lovely coffee from our friends at Anecdote.

Make sure to subscribe in order to stay up-to-date with Nautilus’ events & field notes

Subscribe now

Sign up for our August events

August 3 – Art and Poetry Night

Sign up here. Hosted by Ayana and Lena at Casa Nautilus

Come immerse yourself in a night full of art and poetry; leave feeling inspired and with new friends. Featuring readings and works by Lena Kaouki and Ayana Farooq.

August 9 – Anedocte coffee shop experience #3

Invite only, hosted by Neel at Casa Nautilus

The third of a series of intimate, intentional coffee experiences that Neel will be hosting this summer under his brand: Anecdote. His goal this summer is to build a tight-knit community of kind, curious and creative people who are interested in the arts.

August 10 – Divine is Fine Art Exhibition

Sign up here. Hosted by Lena at Casa Nautilus

Join us for this pop-up art exhibition with Greek artist Lena Kaouki. Her latest work explores the subject of divinity and the artist’s effort to deepen her relationship to the divine via a humorous and whimsical lens.

August 23 – San Francisco Night Market

Sign up here, hosted in collaboration with Daylight, Anecdote and Nautilus

Come celebrate friendship, culture, and hot weather with us in a hidden garden in the heart of San Francisco. Daylight, Nautilus and Anecdote are teaming up to craft a juicy evening full of interesting people to meet & experiences to dive in.

August 23 – Inside the Shell: Casa Nautilus party

Sign up here, hosted by the Nautilus proteges

Experience the heart of Nautilus with art installations, live music, and quality conversations all night long!

Subscribe now

The Nautilus founding cohort has kicked off! There will be time to share more on the incredible adventure we’re on – until then, here is how you can connect with us and meet us in person:

Sign up to our June events

June 20 – Living in the Future: walk & talk

Invite only, hosted by Zebo and Verda

A highly curated event to discuss what inspires inventors’ breakthrough ideas and the inflection moments that made those ideas happen.

June 22 – soul street sunday: art performance

Sign up here, hosted by MK (in collaboration with Ayana, Sommaiya and Igor)

Come listen to music and poetry on the streets of San Francisco (at Powell Street Station)! The Nautilus proteges are gathering forces to host this event and perform together.

June 28 – Anedocte coffee shop experience #1

Invite only, hosted by Neel (in collaboration with Amblard Leather Atelier)

The first of a series of intimate, intentional coffee experiences that Neel will be hosting this summer under his brand: Anecdote. His goal this summer is to build a tight-knit community of kind, curious and creative people who are interested in the arts.

June 28 – SILICON COLOSSEUM: Robot fight

Invite only, hosted by Verda

This is the first showcase of cutting-edge robot supremacy – an underground robot boxing ring! Highly curated event for robot conoisseurs.

Sign up to our July events

July 6 – Ice cream social with 1517 Fund

Sign up here, hosted by me, Zelda

Join the 1517 and Nautilus community at Dolores park for a casual hangout and ice cream eating! Let’s celebrate July 4th together and share the latest updates on our quests.

July 13 – Third Culture Jam

Sign up here, hosted by Sommaiya and I

Are you a third culture kid? Come celebrate your multi-faceted identity with people like you while sipping on coffee and enjoying a live music performance by Sommaiya Angrish.

July 19 – Inside the Shell: Casa Nautilus party

Sign up here, hosted by the Nautilus proteges

Experience the heart of Nautilus with art installations, live music, and quality conversations all night long!

Subscribe now

Study with a shaman.

Read every book banned in your country.

Spend a month eating only food you grow.

Build a computer from scratch.

Handwrite your favorite book from cover to cover.

Follow a lover across continents.

Memorize a poem in its original language.

Learn a martial art that's practiced in only one small region.

Join Nautilus.

Don’t do it because your friend told you to. Do it because your friend told you not to.

What makes you special is the sum of your quests (see: specific knowledge).

Subscribe now

For three months, you live and eat for free in our house (in San Francisco) with other participants. We also give you an additional stipend for your equipment.

Applications open today. The next cohort begins on March 1st. Come shape an optimistic and beautiful world:

Apply here

Nautilus is funded by a community of patrons who want to spark a new Renaissance and support the next generation of creatives. If you are interested in supporting this movement, write to me at zeldapoem[at]gmail[dot]com or directly donate here.

It’s going to be intense

Geniuses across ages mastered the dance between exploration and focus.

They’d dive obsessively into a subject, learning its every nuance, only to emerge and let curiosity pull them elsewhere. By alternating intense focus with open-ended exploration, they connected invisible dots and sparked breakthroughs.

In today’s world, institutions push expertise to the extreme, narrowing the creative field. At Nautilus, we nurture both sides. Our proteges dedicate themselves to their craft—whether in art, science, startup—showing up with commitment week after week. We hold space for the depth of the work by giving resources, a focused environment, and a culture of accountability. But we also encourage “side-quests,” from sci-fi reading marathons to impromptu art performances, inviting the spontaneity of exploration to meet discipline.

Away from the noise of their day-to-day lives, our proteges get to dive into their craft with fresh eyes and surrounded by extraordinary peers.

Shaping the Renaissance minds of the 21st Century

The essence of Nautilus is shaped by the power of cross-pollination—the creative energy that emerges when fields intersect and disciplines collide. Weekly gatherings bring participants together, a space to share insights, trade skills, and push each other forward.

By putting together brilliant people across fields in the same room, we aspire to create a home for the polymaths of this world.

We celebrate those unafraid to cross boundaries by offering them direct patronage and a space to thrive. Here, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers collaborate, creating a culture of curiosity and courage.

Nautilus’ proteges embody the creative spirit that once defined history’s greatest builders. The goal is to set a new standard for what a Renaissance looks like in the 21st century.

The revival of direct patronage

While capitalism drives innovation, some of humanity’s most transformative ideas defy financial valuation. During the Renaissance, people understood this: patronage flourished because it recognized that certain creative and scientific pursuits required freedom from financial constraints to reach their full potential. Patrons enabled artists and thinkers to explore and experiment. Their goal wasn’t profit but the creation of a more inspiring world, one enriched by curiosity and beauty.

Today’s culture prioritizes utility over pure progress, demanding quick financial returns on investments. This focus is limiting, as not all groundbreaking work can be quantified or even understood, especially in its early stages.

Nautilus revives this spirit of patronage for the modern age. By funding the makers and visionaries of today, patrons join a legacy of patronage that has always driven human progress. And unlike the Renaissance patrons, they have a contemporary advantage: donations to Nautilus are tax-deductible.

Donate here

Rising above apathy

Imagine a world where teenagers and young adults, rather than sitting in classrooms, are engaged in meaningful work that fuels their passions. A world where youthful energy and creativity are taken seriously, leading society forward rather than being stifled by outdated systems.

In this vision, millions of young minds—our future Einsteins and da Vincis—are empowered to innovate, create, and make our world more beautiful and vibrant than ever.

This is the world Nautilus is fighting for. We stand against a culture that undervalues youth and dismisses their potential, and we reject the apathy that has left so many disconnected. We believe in cultivating a generation that feels inspired and capable of shaping the future—one bold step at a time.

Are you 22yo or under and want to get a three-month break to build something you’re obsessed about? Apply here! I’m excited to hear from you.

If you want to help fund this initiative, you can do so on this donation page. If you want to be part of our community of patrons, reach out to me directly zeldapoem[at]gmail[dot]com.

Thanks Anna Laurent & Spencer Kier for the edits.

1. Many talk about education; few create impactful projects.

2. Pop-up villages are promising grounds to build the future of education.

3. Both adults and children benefit immensely from spending time together.

Drawing from these learnings, I'm leading a day of workshops at Edge Esmeralda—a one-month pop-up village in June, an hour from San Francisco. We will build projects on education to implement throughout the month.

Edge Esmeralda is family and young builder-friendly. Together, we have already built a fellowship, a toddlers program, and learning days welcoming children and adults. Yet, we believe it takes a whole community to create viable alternatives to conventional education.

Program

We will have a dense day filled with activities designed around the following goals:

• Babysitting Program:

  • Develop a chart for childcare.

  • Create a program to reward our volunteers in babysitting with community currency.

• Intergenerational Experiences:

  • Create guidelines for leading a successful children and adult-friendly workshop.

  • Build an intergenerational hackathon where mixed-age teams work together to imagine the future of education.

• Young Builders:

  • Attract SF young builders to join us and contribute to the community.

  • Accelerate youth projects at Edge Esmeralda.

How to Participate

Visit Edge Esmeralda the weekend of June 8th and 9th, or even better, stay for a week or the entire month to help build these ambitious projects!

- Event website →

- Buy tickets →

- Book accommodation →

If you already have your ticket, I can't wait to work alongside you to bring more educational options to our pop-up village! And if you can't make it on the 8th, we will also host a hackathon during the third week of June to imagine the future of education.

For questions or if you want to collaborate, contact me at zelda[at]edgecity.live.

See you soon!

Daria Halprin the co-founder of the Tamalpa Institute, a dancer and a performer, is another living example of this. From the youngest age, both her artists parents and the people they’d collaborate with would play the role of mentors to her.

75 years later, she is on my podcast to share the tales of growing up in the 50s in the Bay Area with alternative parents, becoming a young dancer and touring with her mother’s company around Europe, and studying under some of the big names of the 20th century in psychology.

Here are some highlights of the transcript of our conversation, focused on what she has to say about mentors.

In our discussion, we also cover other forms of alternative education, healing through dance, and advice for people in their 20s. If you are interested in listening to it, do so on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or enjoy the video on Youtube.

A creative education in the 50s in California

Daria: “My story started here in the woods, in the redwoods of Northern California, at the foot of Mount Tamalpais.

My parents were two alternative artists and designers, Anna and Lawrence Halprin, and they were also both lovers of nature. And so my childhood was infused with this beautiful place that we lived and grew up in, that is near San Francisco, but feels a little bit like it's awfully far away. 

As a child, I grew up in an atmosphere that was filled with imagination and fantasy. And I danced on this beautiful dance deck.”

“Between hiking with my father and collecting flowers and learning about nature and dancing with my mother and running away from home with my sister into this beautiful redwood forest where we would play amongst the trees, that was a kind of a very remarkable childhood that I began with.

And that's not to say that that childhood wasn't filled with its own kind of difficulties, but it was very unique in that way, very, very alternative.

And so from childhood, in a way I think that I was mentored into an educational way of looking at life that had a profound connection to creativity and to nature.”

Parents as mentors?

Daria: “You know, when I think about my childhood, my parents were not only my parents, they were my mentors. [...] And so I had to differentiate between my parents as parents and my parents as educators.

And then, you know, as I got older, especially late teens and early 20s, I was able to find some mentors. And those mentors were the people that were most important to me. And that's where I learned the most, having those models of innovative thinkers and who I could learn from and fashion myself after in some ways.

I learned by making the mistakes that I made and by learning what I didn't know. And in some ways, I learned by imitating my mentors, people who I had watched working, who I was so inspired by.

And, okay, I'll do it like I saw them do it. And to some extent, that also includes a way that I mirrored my mother in her work. At the same time, I was really trying to find a different way, which also was helpful to have a frame of reference that she provided so that I could experiment with, "Okay, here's what I learned from her. Here's how I watched her work. Now I'm going to find my own way."

So I had a point of reference that was very important to move off of and to come back to.

And I think that that's an important way to understand mentorship as well, to mirror and to have a point of reference to move off of and come back to when you get lost and when you have questions.”

“As young people search for alternative ways to learn, that's really important:

Pay attention to the gifts and the passion that you have, you know, and where can you find mentorship and learning that will help you build on that, not just do what you know or even do what you feel, but build on it.

And so my way of doing that, because this is what I had available at the time, is that I started teaching and the studio and the students became my mentors.”

A therapist as a mentor

Zelda: “I want to go back to your teen years and to a chapter of your life when you've been an actress. [...] Could you tell us more about that?”

Daria: “I didn't look for it. It found me. That wasn't my dream. It found me because of my life as a dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area scene. I'd been in some documentaries. I was 18 years old. I was 17, 18 years old. I was studying at UC Berkeley and I wanted to go to college. I hadn't quite figured out what I wanted to do because, as I said, it wasn't my intention to make my life's work dance or theater even.”

[…]

“I went on a few auditions for films and I lived in Hollywood during that time. I didn't like it. I didn't like the atmosphere. I didn't like the culture. I hadn't made a decision to leave yet, but I wasn't comfortable there. It was so different than the environment that I was used to here in the Bay Area. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I would say I was pretty lost at that time.

In a way, ultimately, it sent me back to my roots.

So, when I came back from my Hollywood experience, and my marriage to Dennis Hopper, which was quite traumatic, and that experience of really having lost my ground, almost entirely, and not knowing what to do next in having a little baby, which was terrifying, I realized that I needed therapy.

And so, I started that healing process for myself.

And I started working in therapy with a man named Robert Hall, who had been a senior student of Fritz's, Fritz Perls, and who developed an approach that integrated gestalt therapy with somatics and body work. […] We became close friends, and he became my mentor. And I worked with him very closely every week for a number of years, sometimes several times a week.”

A message for the youth

Zelda: “What would you say to young people that are listening to us who might feel lost with their path, who are maybe in high school or in their early 20s. What kind of message would you like them to hear?”

Daria: “Well, as we've been talking, I've been reminded of the importance of the mentors in my life. And looking back, I'm so touched by how important that was.

And to the extent that, "Oh, I wish I would have had even more time with that mentor, more time with that mentor." I would say that: find a mentor.

I think that the most valuable education we receive comes through the kind of teachers we have in our lives. Find the teacher who's right for you.

I wouldn't advise doing it all on your own. I think, one, it's lonely. And, two, there is so much knowledge out there.

Elders have so much to give, have so much knowledge and life experience to give. While I think it's wonderful to kind of innovate your own way as a young person, as I did, I think having an advisor or two or three is really, really important. And I never would have been able to innovate on my own if I hadn't had those mentors.

So that's what I would say.

Find mentors. Find elders.”

Hi! I’m Zelda. I spend my days building a school, teaching teens to become awesome adults, connecting hackers & creatives, and sharing wholesome stories on Twitter/X, my podcast, and in my newsletter. See ya!

The difference between someone who pursues a conventional path and a renegade is that the latter is aware of the cost of their chosen path.

It never occurs to people who follow along with what they’re told that they might be missing out on most of their potential. But someone who walks away from social expectations knows exactly what sacrifices they’re making - and there’s always someone around to remind them about it.

Most people think an unconventional path is harder, but no matter what you choose (conventional vs original), it comes with hardship. So, what price are you willing to pay? For me, the answer is evident: I am a pain seeker.

“Seek pain” is part of my design but it was first articulated to me while reading about Replit. It’s a principle that is fundamental to their company culture.

“When something seems off, start asking questions. When something is painful, get curious about why. When something’s uncomfortable, dive in. Don’t ignore it. Don’t get defensive. Get inquisitive. Look at the data with clear eyes. Accept nuance. Ask for feedback constantly.” Replit’s operating principles

When talking about seeking pain, what we’re really discussing is the quest for progress. Discomfort, challenge and confrontation is the most direct path to transformation, learning and growth. It boils down to consciously going after the hard things, with the aspiration of creating a better version of yourself or of what you’re building.

Bigger challenges = bigger rewards

When you play a game with bigger challenges, the rewards are bigger, too. In the case of seeking pain, a reward can look like:
- learning something new,
- building a product that enhances people’s lives,
- earning some golden nuggets of wisdom,
- or even just having stories worth sharing.

As much on an individual than on a collective level, we are made to progress, which involves confronting ourselves to exciting challenges. This is why school is a bad experience for most people: it is way too underwhelming.

Of course, from a conventional path to a marginal one, there’s a spectrum of challenge sizes to tackle. In my case, what a friend once told me captures where I situate myself: “Every time we call each other, you live on a new continent, have launched a new project, and have a new lover.”

She was right - I have quite a sensational path. But with the weight of my 22 years spent on this earth, my physical body sometimes feels like it’s 10 or 20 years older for all the stress destiny and myself have made it endure.

I’ve come to peace with that. You need to learn to enjoy the cost you pay for the path you decided to walk.

How to seek pain and make the most out of it

Just so you know I’m legit in the seeking pain game, let me flex some examples of what I’m talking about:

• Dropping out of both school and my mom’s home at 16 years old to go lead an education revolution;

• Running an educational program and doing conferences in front of hundreds of students at 17;

• Traveling the world by myself and moving to a small Mexican town without knowing how to speak Spanish at 21;

• Deciding to shave my head from one day to the other because I noticed I was feeling stressed about doing it.

Putting yourself in difficult situations and learning from them boils down to 3 simple steps:

i. Notice
If you’re living your life on autopilot, chances are you’re not aware of your deepest fears.

Start by developing mindful practices, allowing you to get clarity about yourself and the frontiers of your comfort zone. Be curious about your limiting beliefs and why they shaped themselves in the first place.

ii. Do
Once you’re clear on what it is that you’re afraid of, you can move on and just do it. WHAT? Yeah, it’s called Exposure Therapy and it consists of confronting the object of your fear in order to break the irrational pattern of avoidance you’ve developed.

For example, when Amjad, the CEO of Replit, noticed he was crippled by anxiety when it came to public speaking, he decided to join improv classes to confront his fear. He ended up becoming a charismatic public speaker - at the price of feeling intense stress and embarrassment while he was learning to overcome his dread.

iii. Reflect
Reflecting on what you’ve experienced is a crucial final step. Acknowledge the discomfort and the failures just as much as the progress and epiphanies that came with them. Write it all down. By articulating what you’ve been through (however significant or not it may be), you’re able to extract and remember important lessons.

The poison is the medicine.

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The line between post-traumatic growth and post-traumatic stress

Taleb coined a concept in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder that I’ll never forget: the difference between post-traumatic stress — the negative effects of experiencing trauma, and post-traumatic growth — the positive output of experiencing trauma.

You can’t control being a victim of a traumatic event. But you can control (if you’re careful) how far you’ll go in intentionally seeking pain.

For example, at 19 years old and having worked 7 days a week for insane hours, without ever taking breaks or doing the vital self-care of eating healthy or doing exercise, I was burned out and had to take a break. That break ended up being 3 years away from my field.

I had sought too much pain. That was my responsibility - nobody forced me to do it. That time, the cost was way bigger than the reward.

Seeking pain, intense growth, or wild dreams needs to be balanced with a healthy routine, a great support system and, as I mentioned earlier, time to reflect and process the things you experience.

Seek pain, but not to the point where you give up or traumatize yourself.

I hope this made you want to extend your comfort zone and be clearer on the life you aspire to! Follow my podcast on your favorite platform to hear more on Amjad’s journey on seeking pain, coming soon.

I am always happy to hear your thoughts, whether in the comments, by reaching out on Twitter, or by email at zeldapoem@gmail.com.

Until next time,

Zelda

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Thanks Kyle for the editing and Zack for the feedbacks.

Buildspace is a school for ideas. Over the course of 6 weeks, you work on the project you’re most passionate about, learning to get users or revenue. If you demonstrate great motivation and progress, you have the chance to win $100K and/or get into their schools in San Francisco or Dubai, where you’ll spend more time developing your project.

There are multiple benefits to being part of a program like buildspace. Personally, by learning to create my own podcast, dropUp, I’m developing my video editing skills, understanding how to record better quality sound, and becoming exceptional at having insightful conversations.

And beyond those project-specific lessons, the beauty of such an experience really lies in how much you learn about yourself.

One specific topic I’ve been reflecting on since joining buildspace is competition. I’ve been paying attention to my desire to “be the best” and dealing with how that affects me. That’s letting me optimize my mindset to build something great, while also learning to enjoy the overall process.

Competition, a survival mechanism

Competition is a central element to human life. We compete in all kinds of settings, intentionally or not: we want the best grades to get into the best schools or the best job, or we try to maximize our chances of finding the most attractive romantic partner. Thankfully, we’ve moved beyond the days when our ancestors competed over meals in life-or-death fights for survival.

Competition is a key part of what makes humanity progress: this can be clearly seen when, for example, a new sports record is set, as then other athletes are suddenly also able to exceed the previous record (think of the four-minute mile). Competition pushes us to create a better frame of reference to reach for.

Unfortunately, competition isn’t always a healthy urge. It can also easily become a vector for loss of motivation or energy. It all depends on the framework of the competition itself and, of course, how you’re built and your relationship to yourself.

When competition crushes you

I’ve had a varied relationship with competition. I’ve always been very self-driven to create and give my best, no matter my competitors. I might be wrong, but I’ve long considered competition to be a masculine trait, one that I didn’t believe I had.

For instance, when at school I was never affected by any potential competition. No wonder I dropped out of high school, right?

But my experience since joining buildspace has led to quite a discovery about myself: I’ve been feeling anxious about losing, which has threatened my self-confidence, something that’s otherwise been pretty stable for a long time.

All in all, the fact of knowing that I’m in a competition with others had a negative impact on my performance instead of a positive one.

Take a recent example: I made a trailer for my podcast last weekend. It was such an anxiety-inducing process! I was trying to be funny because most successful people at buildspace had made funny demos. I was very rough on myself and my editing ability. But those really aren’t me at all! If I’d had that mindset over the past years, I probably would not have been able to publish a book, build a school and generally create lots of content.

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So what’s going on with my brain and how can I hack those chemicals to help me win joyfully?

In trying to better understand, I found this interesting research about the N-effect: the bigger the group of competitors, the less motivated you feel to win. But when you’re in a smaller group with your opponents, you perceive your chances of winning to be higher, and therefore you feel more excited about the competition.

#hack: Find 5 people with whom you intentionally decide to compete. Ignore the others. But don’t choose just anyone…

Choose peers at a similar level as you, who you can befriend. Competing against someone way below your level is boring. Trying to be better than someone with way more experience than you will drag you down. And why choose people you like? This is something I learned while building a similar school to buildspace: being friends with your competitors means that even if you’re competing for a scarce good, you will still help each other, which creates a win-win situation no matter the outcome.

#hack: Be a winner no matter the result. Who do you want the buildspace experience to help you become?

Maybe you won’t win the $100K this time. Most people won’t! Now, then, how can you make this experience fruitful and take away valuable lessons that can help you win next time? What does “winning” look like for you?

IFS (Internal Family System) framework can be very helpful to become the winning version of yourself. The concept is based on getting to know the different versions of yourself in order to consciously choose which ones you’ll use while experiencing life. This, in return, helps you to be at the top of your abilities.

There’s a version of yourself that’s stressed about losing, and already feels like a loser. What are the underlying beliefs held by that part of you? When did this part of you first appear?

But there’s also a version of yourself that’s a joyful warrior. Someone who’s resilient, has grit and stays optimistic, even in the hardest of times. What does that version of you look like, what does that version do and think?

Once you’ve developed genuine empathy and curiosity into your different parts, you can decide which will receive most of your attention. With time, you’ll transform the patterns that were binding you to the loser version, letting you become your preferred version of yourself.

For me, a winning version of myself feels excited about working on my projects, creating meaningful relationships with others, and feeling useful to my community. Funnily enough, the $100K doesn't even cross my mind when I envision that version of myself.

The ultimate #hack

I had the chance to be surrounded with mentors early, all the way back when I dropped out at 16 years old. Respected entrepreneurs, hackers and renegade thinkers taught me more about succeeding than school or any self-help book.

They know in their bones what they’re talking about – they’ve experienced the highs and the lows of a uniquely carved path.

I know that not everyone has the chance to hang out with awesome people. Whether you’re stuck in a small village somewhere or because your parents force you to stay in school, there are plenty of reasons why you might not be in an environment that’s good for your growth.

That’s why I decided to build my podcast: dropUp

I record conversations with my favorite, most successful renegade role models to share them with the world and help youngsters like me find their path and stop doubting.

You will still have to walk your own path, but at least you’ll have great stories to look up to as motivation. Not bad, huh?

Wanna get the cheat codes from people like Farza, Amjad or Danielle? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform. On Youtube, you’ll even get to see the videos of those interviews!

May the best win, feel free to reach out on Twitter if you want to compete with me!

Zelda

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Exceptional, phenomenal, singular, remarkable… are compliments I’ve gotten used to hearing.

But it wasn’t always this way. In high school, I was more likely to hear that I was a disappointment, awkward, a failure, even. My mom was worried about me, not proud.

In a word, I was a loser.

How did I go from there to here? tl;dr, I went all-in on taking an unconventional path that revealed that I was highly talented at some particular things.

Let me be clear: I wasn’t any more of a misunderstood genius than anyone else. And most people tried to discourage me from going the unconventional route, even if that meant staying below average in conventional things.

That’s a big issue with the way we think of original paths: because they seem to be harder, we think you must be exceptional in order to choose them.

If you decide to drop out, leaving traditional studies behind, for instance (but still believe you aren’t going to completely waste your life), people might ironically ask you: “What do you think, that you’re the next Jobs or Zuck?”

Again, this is a misconception. People become exceptional only once they’re on the right path. Their singularity is unearthed thanks to the environment in which they put themselves,  not the other way around.

Being exceptional matters

Being special means being uncommonly good at something, or embodying something unique.

The only people I’ve met who’ve said to me that they’re not interested in feeling special were status signaling. They were trying to be special by saying that they’re not interested in being special.

The truth is, we all want to feel exceptional: it means we’re irreplaceable, that we’re needed; that in turn translates into the reassurance that we will keep receiving love and attention.

Depending on your upbringing, sitting with that truth might not be easy. For myself, the aspiration of being exceptional - as in, being recognized for my strengths - carried a lot of shame.

But here I am, peacefully teaching you how to navigate this topic for yourself. You can do it too!

Why not a conventional path?

What’s the conventional path I’ve been talking about? Going through school and its very narrow ways of evaluating what is extraordinary.

Here’s the thing: How many exceptional scholars do you know, even with the massive volume of students that our society trains?

If you want to become exceptional in a conventional way, it’s not even enough to be accepted into an Ivy League school: you need to be the top of your class, of your school year, even of your generation. You’re playing a game that’s extremely competitive, because literally every other kid is pursuing that same kind of extraordinary by default.

In that sense, unconventional paths seem to me to be the safest way to become exceptional.

What’s hard with an original path

I see a lot of confusion when people think about what’s hard in walking down an unusual path. It’s not about skills; what’s hard is finding the right path. Still, that’s less hard than staying on a path that’s not for you, feeling it daily as your soul is sucked away from you.

But the most difficult thing to handle is others. Until you’re met with a fair amount of external success, people will constantly annoy you with projections of their own insecurities.

People who have left the main road but haven’t yet found their genius are marginalized. They are told they’re confusing. Annoying.

People who have left the main road AND found their way are only then told they’re exceptional. Geniuses.

It’s a law of nature: If you aren’t ready to spend your time on the margins, you won’t make it to being called a genius. If you’re ready, though, keep reading.

Develop specific knowledge

Specific knowledge (knowledge you cannot be trained for) is the key to guiding your personal odyssey towards being remarkable.

This “knowledge” is the sum of your random interests and obsessions, your life story, skills and natural talents. Again, nobody will get why it makes sense until you succeed in articulating it all in something that garners external success. In the beginning, it always feels like you’re just breaking the rules. In other words, you’re going to have to be creative at life itself.

Which is why what you should focus on, right now, is having a good time pursuing what you absolutely love. Dream insanely big. Go out and find ways to learn whatever you need to achieve them.

Validation will come. But not now. You’ll get used to being a renegade, and one day, like me, you’ll be able to look back at the people who tried to discourage you. At that point, you’ll be rooting for them to find their own ways to be exceptional.

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I’m launching a podcast on exceptional people!

My dream is to help every person in my generation find their way of being unique. As a teen, I lacked models for unconventional educations that could be leading to inspiring careers.

Thanks to dropUp, I am filling this gap. You will discover the very bumpy, singular paths of successful people from all industries (entrepreneurs, artists, philosophers, chefs, therapists…), ages and backgrounds. With them, I’ll explore the key decisions they’ve taken in pursuit of crafting their specific knowledge.

If you’re interested, be sure to follow me on Twitter or Instagram, where I’ll be sharing more info in the coming weeks.

Creative blocks are disguised inner conflicts. You’re telling yourself that you just don’t know where to start, what to talk about, or how to say it well.

Truth is, you’re at war with yourself. An inner conflict doesn’t have to be an existential crisis: you might just wish to be speaking about something other than what’s inhabiting your mind. Or you might want more time to perfect your craft. Or you wish you had a broader audience to react to what you put out. Maybe you’re just exhausted and need a damn nap.

Write it down: what’s getting in your way? It might take pages to figure it out, but in the end it can surely be summed up in one sentence.

Once you have boiled it down, a common reaction then would be to judge yourself for thinking this way. What if instead you got curious about the purpose of your pattern? Internal Family Systems teaches that every part of you, even the ones that are blocking you from experiencing love, creativity or peace, are just doing the job of protecting yourself.

Once you bring awareness to it all, you have agency to lovingly re-organize the story you’re telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. You can better see what’s available out there in your reality, and what pleasant perspectives exist for you to flow into. Remember to keep writing yourself through it.

Creativity is, as Sherry Ning puts it, “A fingerprint of who you are.” What shapes of your self have you yet to embrace?

This note was inspired by my recent workshop, Discover Your Creative Potential By Crafting “Tomorrow’s School”, and by Isabel, Sherry and Kasra’s salon: Creative Blocks: Overcoming Your Resistance.

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