August 31, 2026
Deprivation
Moving fast and building for durability are not opposing choices. The real question is what must be carried so speed does not become fragility.
Durango, Colorado
Field notes on systems, meaning, and the work of becoming.
A personal study of technical systems, inner work, and the natural world by Jason Strickland.
Enter the field notesA place of study
I have spent much of my career making systems easier to trust. Lately, I have been learning that the same work applies inward.
A broken process and an old defense have something in common. Both can keep producing familiar results long after they have stopped serving the whole.
Alchemy gives me language for that change. The mountains give me somewhere to feel it. Consulting gives me a place to practice it. This is where I write about what I am learning along the way.
Journal
Field Notes
Written from inside the work, before the rough edges have been polished away.
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August 10, 2026
Human After All
AI memory may be more than a retrieval problem. It may help organizations recover what they have learned and help people recognize patterns we have forgotten.
August 9, 2026
Every Placement
I learned to climb by chasing grades. It took older climbers, and most of the rest of my life, to understand the value of moving with intention.
July 9, 2026
Controlled Burn
Unchecked, agents create surface, accretion, and complexity in any dimension you point them at. Escaping that growth required a deliberate burn.
June 2, 2026
AI Hash Pipe
LLMs are good at matching. Governance gives them constrained patterns to match and gives humans a place to remain accountable.
April 28, 2026
I Think We're Lost
Agentic systems will keep pushing toward delivery unless we deliberately build the friction that makes durability possible.
The first note
The work begins here
This is not a place for finished answers. It is a place to look carefully at what happens when technical systems, human systems, and the inner life begin revealing the same patterns.
Some notes will begin with artificial intelligence or data governance. Others will begin with a card drawing, a hard conversation, or a day in the high country. The subject changes. The practice remains the same: notice what is true, stay with the tension, and take the next honest step.
Recurring lines of inquiry
The threads I keep following.
These subjects are not separate departments. They overlap, argue, and occasionally reveal something neither could show alone.
01
5 notes
Systems & Stewardship
AI, governance, durable systems, and the responsibility that comes with increasing human capability.
Follow this thread →
02
0 notes
The Inner Work
Jung, alchemy, tarot, men’s work, and the older traditions that offer language for change.
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03
1 note
Life Outside
Mountains, rivers, weather, movement, recovery, and the places where an idea has to meet the body.
Follow this thread →