Welcome to Knapsack 👋

Hello again,

This issue wasn’t 100% ready.
It still isn’t. But I published it anyway.

Lately, I’ve been wrestling with the blank page, that space of possibility where nothing exists, and every word feels like a wrong beginning. I came across this idea from Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter, The Imperfectionist and that struck me hard:

70% happy

Oliver Burkeman, The Imperfectionist: Seventy per cent

If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it.
… Moving forward at 70% takes more guts, more strength of character, than holding out for 100%, because it entails moving forward amid uncertainty, anxiety, and the disagreeable feeling that comes with putting less-than-perfect work into the world.

Link to original

It stuck with me.
And this newsletter was born somewhere in that not-quite-right-but-not-wrong-either state.

I’ve learned that publishing at 70% doesn’t mean being sloppy. It means letting go of the illusion that a thing needs to be complete to be worth sharing. That’s liberating. Sometimes, the cracks let the light in. Sometimes, the draft is the final form.

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🪞Reflection: Notes & Knowledge

I use Obsidian for my notes. My days begin with a blank daily note. Not a journal entry. Not a task list. Just a note that waits to take shape. It becomes what I need it to be — a scratchpad, a checklist, a place for stray ideas and half-written thoughts.

In a world where AI can generate passable writing, the real value lies in how we think with words, not just how we produce them. A note is no longer just a container for information — it’s an extension of the self, a mirror of the mind in motion.

This is where intertextuality comes in. Notes talk to other notes. A fleeting observation links to a book quote, which in turn connects to a newsletter idea. Over time, these links form a kind of personal universe — a space where thinking is not linear but layered.

Obsidian gives me a map of that world. It helps me return to past me’s thinking — flawed, partial, unfinished — and build on it. That’s the 70% mindset again. Notes don’t have to be perfect. They have to exist.

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📚 Book Bites: Mark of the Fool series

I’m almost done with the Mark of the Fool (by J.M. Clarke), a gamelit series where the protagonist, Alex, is granted magical powers and chooses the path of a mage-scholar.

What struck me, though, wasn’t the magic or the battles; it was Alex’s habit of keeping a journal. He tracks spells, experiments, and insights. Bullet journals, but for sorcerers. It reminded me of how personal knowledge systems work in our own lives: learning as iteration, as self-dialogue.

The fantasy might be fictional, but the habit is real.

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🔍 Strange New Word: noegenesis

Noegenesis (noun)
— Not just acquiring or recording knowledge, but the actual act of making it.

From Greek nous (mind) + genesis (origin, creation).

It’s one of those words that sounds like it belongs in both a metaphysical text and a sci-fi novel. It’s an obscure term, but a beautiful one evoking the moment when insight emerges, when something becomes known. I like to think that every good notebook is a little engine of noegenesis.

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💬 Quotable Quote

same atoms as pine trees and galaxies

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

We are made up of the same atoms and the same light signals as are exchanged between pine trees in the mountains and stars in the galaxies.

Link to original

This quote by Rovelli lingers like an echo to that thought of letting go of perfection in favor of movement. If we’re made of the same light that pulses through stars and trees, why do we hold ourselves to a standard of flawlessness?

The universe itself is a work in progress, ever colliding, ever expanding, ever recombining. Stars burn out. Mountains erode. And yet, none of it is lacking. None of it is waiting to be finished before existing.

Maybe the truest form of belonging lies in showing up, unfinished and luminous, just as we are.

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🤯 Random Useless Fact

There’s a lake in Russia called Burlinskoye that turns neon pink in summer. The color comes from salt-loving microorganisms, and the lake’s mineral-rich crust is harvested by an old-school narrow-gauge train.

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🤔 Question to Ponder

What knowledge do we carry that we never write down—and why?

For all the careful notes I take in Obsidian, there are still ideas I leave in the margins. Some feel too “obvious.” Others feel too strange. But those unwritten thoughts still shape the way I think. So I wonder.

Question

What lives outside your notes? And what might happen if you brought it in?

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🧳 Until Next Time

This issue was assembled under the 70% rule.
Not perfect, not polished, but published.

If it sparked an idea, led to a question, or made you curious, maybe that’s enough for now.

Stay strange.
Stay unfinished.

— Xavier

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Compass

This issue is part of Knapsack, a satchel of stories, wisdom, and wonder. You can explore past issues here.