Coddiwomple

Wandering Wednesdays #150

Look at this chart carefully: the finishing times of every recorded marathon runner, in one-minute increments. Notice the spikes at 3:00, 3:30, 4:00, 4:30, 5:00 hrs. Tens of thousands of runners, all crossing the line at precise round number times.

How does anyone run 42.195 km and just happen to finish at exactly four hours?

The spikes confirm that arbitrary goals work. Set a goal—random round numbers are favorites—and folks will organise their pain around it. Goals are instructions to reality.

I think about this more than a retired person probably should. Thrice a week, I put something out. The frequency and deadlines are entirely self-imposed. No editor is waiting. No contract is at stake. But the rhythm has held for three years—because the deadline is always there, even if the writing isn’t ready sometimes.

Deadlines work. Especially, arbitrary ones.

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When folks ask me what competency matters most in the years ahead, I tell them: insatiable curiosity.

People who spend too much time planning the future get lost before it arrives. A rapidly changing world will reward those who stay fascinated over those who stay prepared. This is an age tailor-made for the curious—if you are willing to follow a thread without knowing where it leads.

I really mean it. But I also cannot tell anyone what to be curious about. There is no formula. No flowchart. No algorithm that can point you or me to the next interesting theme. And whatever holds my attention today could bore me tomorrow.

Does curious entail wandering? You bet. In the past few months, I have wandered through synthetic biology, dicing onions, street art, gut microbiomes, sand, corporate satire, geopolitical allegory, our twenty-watt brains, and why we have two nostrils. I did not plan any of this. The threads appeared and I just followed them.

How do I decide which threads are worth following? Two questions guide me: why does this matter? and so what? They are simple enough to sound obvious, but they do real work. They separate rabbit holes that reward digging from ones where you are just shovelling dirt. An onion font is whimsical until you ask why—and suddenly you encounter biomimicry, the geometry of growth rings, and the question of where designers find inspiration. A marathon chart is a curiosity until you ask so what—and it becomes a story about how arbitrary goals shape real behaviour.

There is something else curiosity invites that makes it worth the trouble: friction. Some of the best thinking I have done in the past year came from being stretched or challenged—posting an essay and watching readers dismantle my metaphors, question my assumptions, force me to concede where the logic was soft. Curiosity that never meets resistance stays shallow. It merely confirms rather than sharpens.

And yet, I know from experience—being curious is not easy. Our workplaces, our communities, our institutions tend to reward certainty over exploration. Dabbling looks unserious next to specialisation. A mentor told me ages ago to get comfortable with uncertainty and to trust that confusion has a role. I thought it was terrible advice at the time. I see the wisdom clearly now.

Paul Klee, Moonshine, 1919

I did not know the word coddiwomple until I started to write this piece. It means to travel in a purposeful manner toward a vague destination.

I cannot think of a better word for what this nesletter has become.

When I started this mid-week edition 150 weeks ago, I quoted a South African lion tracker, Boyd Varty: I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how to get there. I thought it was a good line. I did not realise then, it was also a prophecy.

I did not set out to create what this has now turned into. There was no three-year vision, no content strategy, no destination with milestones. What I had was a publishing rhythm and a willingness to follow whatever caught my attention that week. But somewhere along the way—without noticing—the wandering started to cumulate. Dots began connecting across time: a piece on belief systems six months ago sharpened what I wrote about geopolitics recently. Pipes began connecting across domains: neuroscience informing a take on AI, street art illuminating economics. Zoom out far enough and a pattern emerges from the individual points—the way a pointillist painting resolves into a scene when you stop staring at the dots. A sense-making capability emerged, gradually, from 150 weeks of showing up.

This is the wonderful thing about coddiwompling. You are not lost. You are not drifting. There is intention—you are moving, you are watching, you are writing. But there is also humility: you have no idea how it will all turn out.

Most of the meaningful chapters in my life did not start with clarity. They started with a hunch. A nudge. A somewhat irrational yes. What felt like detours turned out to be directions. And if I had known exactly where I was going, I might have optimised my way into a smaller life.

150 weeks. A lot of rabbit holes and a few typos—each one, handcrafted. Thank you for the company, the comments, the pushback, the links, and the quiet reading. Here’s to more wandering.

I still do not know where I am going. But I know exactly how to get there.