[…] I’m not 100% sure what the solution to this problem is, but I strongly suspect it’s going to involve a return, at least in part, to my original toolkit: not because it’s more powerful, but because some older part of my mind feels differently about it. This sort of phenomenon is one of the reasons I no longer identify as a Deweyan—it’s exactly the kind of intellectual loyalty Dewey’s merciless sense of progress had no respect for. Patching my personal suck, to borrow a phrase from 43Folders, seems to involve hacking my personal mythos: as with ancient peoples, my toolkit isn’t just a pure instrument, valued relative to what can be done with it; it’s also a physical externalization of my character, and reflects my connection with a specific way of life, to which I am adapted. […]