June 17, 2026
a quiet internal logic
would you buy a $300 shirt if you could never wear it out or show it to anyone?
i posed this to another intern the other day, and we had a heated (fun) debate about it. he said no: what's the point if no one sees it? i said i would, given enough money. it got me thinking harder about something i've always felt but never fully articulated: what taste is, where it comes from, and why it feels so central to who i am.
to me, taste accumulates in two ways: through material collection, and through intellectual and emotional learning. it lives in the objects you choose to keep, the media you seek out, the work you want to make. over time, these choices compound into something that feels distinctly yours.
some places where my taste lives:
i've hypothesized that taste is, at some point, a privilege. it compounds across generations: children raised in musician or artist families often inherit not just skills but a way of seeing, an almost unconscious sense of discernment that comes with growing up around creative practice. being exposed to that kind of environment from a young age is something you can't easily manufacture later.
my parents aren't artists, but i grew up surrounded by books, educational board games, building block toys, and all kinds of experiences that shaped my love for tactile, intentional things. my mom was especially picky about clothes, even when we were on a budget, and firmly believed that a small number of quality purchases beat quantity every time. she was modeling discernment without calling it that. i first had to be picky to avoid her criticism of my choices, but gradually adopted the process to what i truly feel. what began as trying to agree with her taste now frequently disagrees but works for both of us.
at the end of our debate, my friend and i landed somewhere good: he finds meaning in sharing experiences with people. i find it in the choosing.
this tracks with something i've noticed about myself for a long time. i've always had some trouble with the spontaneous, unstructured kind of social interaction — the easy small talk, the impromptu hangout. but i've never had trouble being alone. i love eating alone. i love the private logic of my room, the quiet of my own feed, the internal satisfaction of code that only i can see clicking into place.
what i've come to realize is that it's not that i don't want connection. it's that i connect better when there's a shape to it. a blog post. an are.na channel. a conversation that starts with a real question, like whether you'd spend $300 on a shirt nobody sees. in those spaces, sharing and learning from other people feels completely natural. the structure gives me somewhere to stand.
taste has been a way of building an inner world that's genuinely mine, and then finding the right doors to let people in.
it's the thread connecting my room to my code to my feed. a quiet internal logic that makes me feel like myself, especially when no one's watching.