My Name is a Process

Last night, I somewhat erased my name from Playful Process. It feels like a spiritual initiation of some kind. I never put pen to paper to write and create with such intentional anonymity before. But taking the journey of complete anonymity will require time and I am still considering how far I will go on that.

The Privacy Quest Begins

Now I will start on a journey to see how far I can secure my privacy and anonymity. Is it possible to anonymously be on YouTube, build a following, use Substack, or even incorporate an anonymous company? I'm not sure.

I'm not anxious to erase all my traces. It's not that I want to do something wrong and fear its consequences. I'm afraid of doing something good.

Look at what happened with Jesus and Socrates. Both didn't write anything down—maybe they thought it might increase the chances of early death. I don't think they were scared of death, I just think they had ideas worth spreading before TED was cool. And being dead is counterproductive to the spread of ideas... Anyhow, this didn't prevent them from being executed. Socrates was 71 and I guess it was okay for him. But Jesus was only 33...

Then again, maybe they just thought writing was a waste of time. And, if that is true and I am writing, it means that I am much less than that to start with. Not that I needed any proof... Anyway, I am writing and people who created evidence for their free thinking in eras of surveillance got executed for a lot less. So even if I'm a lot less than Jesus or Socrates, I could still be "executed"—which can be translated in modern terms to cancelled, de-platformed, or, surprisingly for the USA, incarcerated abroad.

Or it might just be that anybody living in Silicon Valley is hypnotized by invisible powers that start making one paranoid.

The Silicon Valley Mind Virus

Living here means absorbing certain terms, and therefore, certain brain patterns:

1) P-DOOM: There is a non-trivial probability that the world as we know it is going to end.

2) Drop-outs is the new synonym for "self-made man."

From these two things combined, a certain flavor of narcissism arises. Anyone can be the self-made hero that will diminish the doom probability by a lot. That's because:

1. Tech plays a key role in P-doom. (Remember what happened with nuclear energy? Did it translate to clean energy that could save millions, or into weapons that could destroy much more than millions?)
2. Any intern can be replaced by AI.
3. If AI can replace interns, maybe the bar for becoming a world-saving "hero" is lower than we think.

The Hyper-Vigilant Future

Right now, my problem is that I'm starting to take these thoughts seriously. And I'm seeing the need for privacy as a key aspect if the doom happens and the result is a hyper-vigilant society in which substances like cannabis are prohibited—which would probably be close to hell to me.

You mean I'm going to have to face that I'm probably way past recreational use and starting to develop dependency issues? No way in hell I would like to take that journey. Maybe my higher self would choose differently, but that's not the part of me that developed these patterns in the first place.

As someone exploring mental health and human connection, I'm aware of the complexity here—substance use often intersects with creativity, anxiety, and authentic self-expression in ways that defy simple categorization (Dopamine Nation is a great book on the topic).

Plus, if you're reading this to this point, I must say: you probably appreciate my authentic voice, however it emerges. Write now, it is a bit medicated with weed. So I'm doing you a favor by not disclosing my name. When the hyper-surveilled society comes, I will have built enough credibility with a non-traceable personality that I'll be able to keep writing authentically, on or off weed.

As Maui said in Moana: "You are welcome"

The Experiment

In other words, I will try to grow a name and a business in the shadows and see how it goes. At least this will give me something more to write about.

I'm building Jongu and Playful Process as my mental health platform for the future. If nothing else, it could be a great platform for me to launch myself as an LCSW. If not, maybe I can just become an entrepreneur. Or a hacker, depending on the whole p-doom story.

The irony isn't lost on me: creating tools for authentic human connection while hiding behind anonymous personas. But maybe that's exactly the kind of contradiction our moment requires—being genuinely present while strategically invisible, building trust while maintaining mystery.

After all, my name is a process. At least by taking my plume name to a different version than that on my birth certificate allows me to experience my name as a process. And processes, by definition, are always becoming something else.