Anchors, Maps, and Why I Write the Way I Do - Why I’m Writing This

On orientation, intuition, and making sense of a changing world

This isn’t an explanation I ever planned to write — but it’s one I keep circling.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve published a steady stream of pieces on subjects that don’t obviously belong together: politics, civilisation, memory, kitchens, humour, sailing. Some readers have followed easily. Others have reasonably asked what on earth connects them.

This is my attempt to answer that — not by defending the work, but by explaining the process behind it.

Yes, I’m writing because I’d like people to read this. I wouldn’t put it on Substack if I didn’t. Writing that never leaves the drawer is a different activity entirely. But that’s not the whole reason, and it’s not even the most important one.

Writing is how I put shape to my thinking.

For as long as I can remember, my thoughts have arrived as images, structures, tensions, directions — rarely as neat sentences. Writing forces those impressions into language, which is often uncomfortable, occasionally clarifying, and sometimes unexpectedly revealing. It lets me test whether what feels coherent in my head actually holds together when exposed to words.

There’s also a personal dimension that would be dishonest to pretend doesn’t exist. Being able to articulate thoughts — and, occasionally, to have them recognised or appreciated — is quietly therapeutic. Not in a confessional sense, and not because I’m seeking reassurance, but because shared understanding has weight. It stabilises things. It confirms orientation.

That said, this isn’t a request for agreement, sympathy, or loyalty. Readers don’t owe me anything beyond their attention, and even that only if the work earns it.

What follows is simply an attempt to explain why I write the way I do.

Ideas Aren’t Collected — They’re Navigated

I’m often asked — particularly by family — where I get my ideas from. The question always lands a little oddly, as if ideas were things you pick up somewhere, like souvenirs.

The honest answer is less impressive and more inconvenient.

I don’t go looking for ideas.
I go looking for orientation.

I’m curious — sometimes productively, sometimes to my own irritation. I listen to news, science, history, psychology, geopolitics, philosophy, and whatever else drifts into range. Not because I’m trying to be broadly informed, but because I become uneasy when I sense that something important is happening and I can’t see its outline.

That curiosity is driven by a single question that refuses to behave:

Why?

Why this?
Why now?
Why does this hold together — or fail — the way it does?

Most people are satisfied once something works. I’m not. I need to know why it works, why it breaks, and what else it might damage while doing either.

The Bigger Picture Is Not Optional

I struggle to understand things in isolation. This isn’t a philosophical position; it’s how my mind operates.

If I can’t see how something fits into a wider structure, I don’t feel informed — I feel trapped. Details without context don’t reassure me. They make me uneasy, like being shown a single brick and told to trust the building.

This is why my writing moves between subjects that appear unrelated. Politics, psychology, personal memory, humour, domestic objects — they’re all entry points into the same terrain. I’m circling questions about how systems hold together, how they decay, and how individuals try to maintain coherence inside that decay.

What looks like drift is usually reconnaissance.

Anchors, Not Signatures

I don’t begin a piece with a thesis. I begin with an anchor.

An anchor isn’t an argument; it’s a feeling with gravity. A sense that something doesn’t line up. That a narrative no longer matches the evidence. That a system is wobbling in a way the headlines can’t quite name.

Once the anchor is down, the writing is free to move — to swing, to approach the same object from different angles.

This is often mistaken for inconsistency. It isn’t. It’s how orientation works. A boat at anchor never sits still, but it doesn’t drift either.

I’m not interested in repeating the same idea until it becomes a signature. Repetition is safe. Anchoring isn’t.

Orientation Is Physical

This may sound metaphorical, but it isn’t.

I have a genuine need to know where north, south, east, and west are — even indoors, even when it doesn’t obviously matter. When I lose that sense of orientation, I feel it physically. Disorientation tightens something in me. It feels enclosed, almost claustrophobic.

Maps calm me.

I remember them easily because I have to. A map isn’t just information; it’s reassurance that things relate to each other, that movement is possible, that there’s a way out if needed.

That instinct doesn’t switch off when the terrain becomes abstract. Political systems, civilisations, personal histories — I experience them spatially, as structures under strain, paths narrowing or opening, fault lines slowly revealing themselves.

Seeing Before Saying

I should probably admit something here.

I’m decent at drawing. I like photography. People have told me I have a good sense of form and function — that I tend to know when something works visually and when it doesn’t.

I don’t experience these as artistic talents so much as ways of checking my bearings.

Drawing lets me rehearse space. Photography lets me frame reality until it settles. Form and function are simply coherence made visible. When something looks right to me, it’s because internal tensions have eased — not because it’s fashionable or clever.

This way of seeing spills over into how I speak.

I have a difficult sense of humour. It tends to arrive unannounced, often at moments when seriousness has become a little too proud of itself. The joke appears not to entertain, but to puncture — a quick reminder that no structure is as solid as it thinks it is.

Sometimes this lands well. Sometimes it doesn’t.

When I’m relaxed, humour acts as a release valve. When I’m irritated, it can harden into sarcasm. That’s the version I try to watch. Sarcasm feels precise, but it rarely improves orientation — it just draws blood.

Comfort, Discomfort, and the Only Voice I Trust

There’s one more thing worth naming, because it underpins everything I’ve described so far.

I have a strong sense of comfortable and uncomfortable. Not socially comfortable — internally. It’s less an emotion than a signal. A tightening or easing that arrives before words do.

For a long time, I treated that signal as background noise. Something to override with logic, discipline, or experience. Over time — and with more mistakes than I’d care to catalogue — I’ve learned to listen to it more carefully.

What I call intuition isn’t magic. It’s accumulation.

It’s everything my senses have taken in — what I’ve seen, heard, felt, noticed in tone and omission — compressed into a single, immediate impression. Patterns, inconsistencies, weight, direction. When I ignore it, things tend to go wrong in very predictable ways. When I pay attention to it, I don’t always get certainty, but I usually get bearing.

This is why I can only write what feels honest to me. Not because I lack imagination, but because writing against that internal signal feels immediately false. Uncomfortable in the wrong way. Brittle.

My more difficult traits — impatience, sharp humour, intolerance for incoherence — aren’t separate from this process. They’re distortions of the same sensitivity under pressure. The task isn’t to eliminate them, but to recognise when they’re informing clarity and when they’re simply reacting.

Writing is one of the ways I do that sorting.

Two Dimensions, Three Dimensions

Writing is two-dimensional. Reality isn’t.

Words flatten things. Diagrams lie. Arguments oversimplify. That’s not a flaw to be eliminated; it’s the terrain.

Trying to force writing into perfect alignment with reality produces brittle work — precise on the surface, fragile underneath. Instead, I treat each piece as a projection: one angle, one slice, knowingly incomplete.

That’s why I don’t rush to conclusions. If something feels unresolved at the end of a piece, it’s usually because it is. Tidiness can be comforting, but it often isn’t honest.

On Being “A Bit Harsh”

I’m aware that this way of seeing can come across as unforgiving. When you’re focused on structure, failure points, and orientation, it’s easy to sound as if you’re judging rather than observing.

That’s something I try to keep an eye on.

I’m not especially interested in being right. I’m interested in being oriented. And I’m certainly not immune to the same confusions and blind spots I write about. If anything, the writing is how I keep myself honest.

This Isn’t New

None of this is recent.

For most of my life, this way of thinking was applied in a formal, business-driven context — analysis that needed to work in the real world, where mistakes had consequences.

Now the material is broader, more reflective, and less constrained by immediate utility. But the process hasn’t changed:

I listen.
I map.
I ask why.
I rebuild the picture until it makes sense to me.
Then I share the map.

If that produces ideas, so be it.

From the inside, it doesn’t feel like creativity.
It feels like navigation — occasionally uncomfortable, sometimes clumsy, but necessary if I’m not to lose my bearings entirely.

Final word (not a conclusion)

This piece isn’t here to persuade.
It’s here to orient.

If it helps you understand the work, good.
If it helps you recognise something of your own thinking, even better.
If not, at least you know where the map was drawn from.