May 13, 2026 May 13, 2026 2026-05-13

In 2018 I wrote about being steadily fluid at the ten-year mark of this blog — consistency by adaptability, stability inside change. I’d borrowed Bruce Lee’s water metaphor: pour water into a bottle, it borrows the bottle’s shape without losing its nature. The blog had done something similar through a decade of radical personal change. Ten years later I’m still around, and the paradox, more alive than ever, is still worth a revisiting blog post.

What’s Actually Stayed the Same

After twenty years of blogging, the consistent core turns out to be a small set of things: the impulse to write publicly when something becomes clear enough to put into words. An assumed preference for directness (at the risk of being perceived as blunt) over performance (as in performing in social media, traffic, etc). A constant attraction to the sweet spot where the practical and the philosophical intersect. Those haven’t changed. The topics have shifted, the tone has evolved, the tools have changed completely — but those three are still the same bottle shape.

What’s also stayed the same is the reader relationship. Not the audience size or the platform, but the basic contract: I write what I actually think, not what I calculate will land well. That’s something I got right early and have managed not to break.

What Changed Completely

The economics. The tools. The context. The initial post was written before large language models existed in any usable form. Now I’m building AI agents, using LLMs as part of my daily writing and thinking process, shipping apps that run on infrastructure that didn’t exist in 2018. The blog is now just a part of a broader system rather than the whole, supportive system. That would have been difficult too do back then.

I’ve also changed a few countries — left Romania and spent time in Spain, then Portugal, then more, and lived in multiple places, eventually found where I want to be. The fluidity kept moving. What remained stable was the orientation: toward clarity, toward honest work, toward the things that pull rather than push.

Where Fluidity Was Actually an Excuse

This is the uncomfortable part. A bit difficult to share, but useful. The “steadily fluid” frame can be used to justify what is actually indecision or avoidance. I admin I’ve done this. More than once. There were things I was “being fluid” about that would have been better served by a firmer commitment earlier. The difference between genuine adaptability and drifting is hard to see from inside, especially when the drifting feels like freedom. And freedom is at the cornerstone of my values pyramid.

Looking back at the things that produced the most — location independence, coding, writing — they were all things I committed to firmly and returned to consistently. The things I stayed “fluid” about for too long often just needed a decision. The fluidity was sometimes a way of not making one. And just drift around, sometimes for years.

Steady Fluidity in an AI Era

The question of this quality in an AI context is genuinely interesting. The tools are changing so fast that almost any specific technical skill you commit to is obsolete within a couple of years. That seems to argue for maximum fluidity — stay light, don’t over-invest in any particular tool or platform.

I think the opposite is actually true. The more unstable the technical environment, the more valuable a stable core identity becomes. If you know what you’re for and what you’re trying to do, you can pick up and drop tools as needed. If you don’t, the fluidity of the environment just amplifies the confusion. The water needs something to be poured into. The bottle matters more, not less, when everything is moving.

Still No Better Metaphor Than Water

I’ve been looking for a better one for years. I haven’t found it. Water is still the most accurate description of what I’m trying to do — consistent in substance, responsive in form, filling whatever container the moment requires without losing the properties that make it water.

Twenty years of blogging is starting to feel like enough evidence that this is a real thing and not just a framing. The stable part is what you’re for. The fluid part is how you get there. The paradox keeps being a paradox, and I think that’s actually beautiful.