to the reader

AAn engineer by trade and an autodidact by temperament, the tally runs; touch it for weeks & yearsN daysN daysN weeksN years into a life whose brevity I have already begun to feel.vita brevis That brevity is not a defect, but a summons. Time is finite, I'd rather spend it on questions that aren't: How do we preserve a private self in an age designed to expose it? What are we really making when we make machine intelligence? How might we build a future resilient enough to hold those who come after us?

Most weeks, I cannot tell whether I am following a path or merely keeping a schedule. Nothing is wrong, which is the difficult part to explain. I do not hate the work, but hatred would at least be a direction. Lost is the honest word, not at sea, but rather lost in a grid where every street is familiar and none of them feel like mine. Faith has not handed me a map. It has given me, on most days, the quiet suspicion that direction exists, and the practice of walking anyway. ars longa

I do not know where this leads. That is partly why I keep a record.memento mori Death is real, and the clock is honest; that seems reason enough to pay attention. Here you will find essays, notes, unfinished thoughts, and things made in the hope that attention itself can become a form of care. I want to make a few things matter, to leave more than I take, and to be useful with whatever light I have been given. For now, this is the account of a soul in motion.

— Carmine Shorette