December 2025 Newsletter: Following the Song

“I don’t know this song.” That’s beginning to become my mantra. From an early age I had a strongly structural mind, dissecting the music, the movies and the stories that came to me, anticipating their twists and turns, learning a vocabulary of beginnings, middles, and endings. I applied this vocabulary to my life, as well, predicting what would come in the month, year, decade to follow, and following a path that aligned with my guesses. 

What I’m finding out now is that living a life guessing at the future isn’t much of a life at all. Constantly thinking, “Oh, I know this one”, I fail to look at the present, the day, the life in front of me, and to truly know it. I fail to trust in the future as God’s and not mine, and fail to know him as well, in the song he's trying to play with my life. And of course, every time I think I know how it will end, I’m lying to myself. I don’t have the score in front of me, or any preceding work to tell me exactly how it will go. It’s scary to admit that, especially when others are relying on me to have that score. It’s hard to say “I don’t know”. But I’ve been saying it a lot more recently. I know much less about what will happen to me and those I care about, next year or tomorrow, than I used to think I did. But I’m living more. In the past year, even in the past few months, I feel like I’ve lived more than I have in the prior 32 years of my life. I’m not looking ahead to the next 40 years, I’m looking at right now, letting go of it as it passes, anticipating nothing. Or at least, trying to.

That said, here are a few pieces of the future I can tell you from our camp. In 2026, we’ll be digging into our resources again, beginning the process of exploration and tying threads together that will hopefully lead to a new album. With this on our plates, unfortunately, we will not have the time and energy we need to deliver content regularly to Patreon. For the time being, we will no longer be active here, and won’t be charging anymore. 

I’ll be incredibly sad to miss out on the regular ways of interacting with you all that Patreon has allowed for. Away from the hubbub of social media, this place became a thriving hub where we could all try things out in the lower-stakes way that the internet at large used to allow. It inspired projects like the Scholars Webquest, which was a special pleasure to see all of you endeavoring to solve. But part of working without a score means trusting that even without the past platforms we’ve been standing on, the connections that matter will still remain, still thrive, and grow into new forms that will dwarf the old in their beauty. Our hearts will be with you as we begin to create the next long-form work that you’ll be able to explore from us, and search for new ways to connect.

My last question to you, for now: what does the road ahead look like to you now? And what are the question marks you’re willing to admit you don’t know?