Restless #2

Some people have a motor that is always on. It's not just ambition. Ambition is wanting to get somewhere. This is different. This is a kind of restlessness that doesn't have a destination. It's a low, constant hum that you feel more than you hear. And when you have it, the world seems to run too slowly.

You might notice it first in school. Even a good school. You can do the work, you might even be at the top of your class, but you feel a growing sense of impatience. It feels like you are sitting in a parked car with the engine revving. You are supposed to be grateful to be in the car at all. Everyone says it's a very nice car. But all you can think is, why aren't we moving?

The hum makes normal life feel out of focus. Conversations at parties, worrying about what other people think, the slow-moving paths that are laid out for you—it all seems like a distraction from something more important that you can't yet name. It's not that you're better than anyone else. You just seem to be tuned to a different frequency.

People with this hum often mistake it for unhappiness. They try to fix it. They travel, they try new hobbies, they try to "live in the moment." But the hum is still there. It's not a bug. It's your operating system. And trying to suppress it is like trying to run a computer without a processor. You just get errors.

What you're really looking for are two things: other people who have the hum, and a problem that's big enough to absorb its energy.

Finding the other people is a profound relief. Suddenly you don't have to translate. You can talk about the things you really think about—the structure of the universe, the limits of intelligence, how to build something that will last for a thousand years—and the other person doesn't look at you funny. They just nod. They have the same hum inside them. The conversation feels like coming home.

Finding the work is the other half. The hum isn't for idling. It needs to be connected to something, to a load that can bear its force. It wants to push against a hard problem. For some, that's a company. For others it's a mathematical proof, or a new kind of physics, or understanding how a cell works. The specific work is less important than its shape: it has to be big enough that you can pour all your energy into it and still not see the bottom.

This kind of work isn't about money or status. Those are byproducts, and often distracting ones. The real reward is the feeling of the hum turning into forward motion. It's the sensation of your own internal energy finally making things in the world move. Of taking this strange, burning restlessness and using it to change a small piece of reality.

If you have this feeling, you've probably spent a lot of time thinking something is wrong with you. You're not broken. You're just a different kind of engine. You're not built for cruising. Don't try to idle. Find something worth pushing.

Burn.