Hacker culture

I have always liked to tinker — taking a thing apart not to fix a fault but to see how it works. I did it for a living for years, and I do it still, in cafés, on my laptop, for fun. I have established that I enjoy what I do, which I treat as significant.

At some point I noticed the practice felt the same. The same playful energy, the same poking at the workings. The only difference, on close examination, is that this time the thing being prised open is the one doing the prising. I have concluded that I am both the laptop and the man opening the laptop, and I find the formulation satisfying rather than alarming.

I do not think this needs further defending. It is a neurodivergent-flavoured passionate energy, hard to fully articulate, the same thing that drives hacker culture. From that first-principles approach the rest of the practice followed: I sat down, I tinkered with myself, and I felt good. That is the report, and I have offered "I enjoyed it" as the result.

I am not claiming enlightenment, and I am not claiming actual freedom, which I do not want. I am claiming that taking myself apart for fun, the way I used to take apart machines, produces a reliable good mood. The hobby is the method. I find that pleasing and unremarkable, and I have not asked whether a method one would have done anyway for fun is doing any work.