I hiked to the redwoods a few days ago. A fallen trunk was on display, its cross-section cleanly labeled. The center was 909 AD. Halfway through its vegetable life the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan. At two-thirds, Columbus discovered the New World. 1776 is an inch from the rim. “That’s America,” I said.

Remy pointed at the very edge. “That’s you,” he laughed.

There’s a fragment of a poem from Ancient Greece: “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” It’s a game applied to philosophers: Plato the hedgehog, Aristotle the fox, and so on.

I’m an utter fox. Devastatingly so. I can’t stick with one thing because my nature can’t abide it. This can be a boon — I’m widely read and can reliably charm a dinner table of intelligent people with a range of opinions and references and anecdotes — but I’m a temporary fascinator. I haven’t built anything lasting, and will probably struggle to my whole life.

I’m at the age where friends with hedgehog brains are seeing their efforts compound and bear fruit. That is not happening with me. If I couldn’t compensate with a certain quickness of thought and elephant memory I’d be utterly dysfunctional. Somehow I’ve scammed my way into a technical degree program at one of the best universities in the world, but I ignore my coursework to read biographies of 11th-century Persian intellectuals and study the I-Ching. It’s the useless things that animate me.

If I find real success it’ll be later in life, and nestled in some fortunate combination of passing interests. I’m behind in many things. I haven’t worked internships, published papers, or fostered relationships with well-positioned mentors. I tell myself that I’m still ahead in life. Unusually for my age and socioeconomic background, I’ve lived in five countries across four continents and have the stories to match. I’ve had unusual and occasionally even unique experiences. These won’t help me make money, but maybe they’ll help me make art.

These are strange times, and difficult to navigate. If artificial general intelligence arrives in two years, or five, or ten, or twenty — what do I want to master before human cognition is obsolete? What will I wish I’d achieved while the world still has stakes? If I search myself the answer is not getting good at computer things. The answer is writing.

The happiest time of my life was when I devoted every waking hour to reading. It was, in retrospect, sublimated suicide. Taken far enough, immersion is something like decapitation; I count myself lucky to have blunted the habit. To me, writing is a way to indulge the death drive. It’s tinged with the same annihilatory power but tempered with enough friction to self-regulate. Unlike reading, its artifacts are obvious and immediate — and we do so enjoy leaving little artifacts around, don’t we?

I’m 22 and I can no longer claim to be young. I’m past the event horizon. But why is it that the me that wrote that sentence still seems so young and laughable, now?