Finding My Way Back to Unknown Arts

Why I'm choosing curiosity and authenticity over career content

Jun 30, 2025

Welcome to Unknown Arts — I’m Patrick, your field guide to creative reinvention in the age of AI. Join thousands of thoughtful builders navigating what’s next.

Hitting a new trail. Made by the author with Midjourney.

Last weekend, I was sitting in my hotel room on a rainy day in Portland, putting some words down for the weekly newsletter, when I had a sudden realization: I didn't feel connected to what I was saying. So I closed my laptop and decided to take a pause.

Since 2022, I've sent 182 newsletters — more than one per week. I've tried different styles, lengths, and formats and built this email list to 7,400+ subscribers, but I still haven't found anything that really clicked. To use a baseball analogy, I've hit a lot of singles and a few doubles, but definitely no home runs. And so now, three years later, I find myself in creative limbo.

The problem became clear when I started my new job at Sublime. Short on time, I figured I could shift my focus to writing about whatever was on my mind at work that week. But that quickly wore me down. Forcing my writing to become an extension of my day job made me feel like I was working overtime for no reward. Even if the insights were useful to people, there was no joy for me in the writing — and joy is essential for the sustainability of any creative act.

I want to still be doing this a decade from now and the only way to ensure I achieve that is to use my writing as a vehicle for my genuine curiosity.

Remembering the guiding story

Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes. (And he sets his mind to unknown arts)
Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, 18

The name Unknown Arts comes from the story of Daedalus in Ovid's Metamorphoses, later echoed in James Joyce's novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." It signifies turning toward unfamiliar creative endeavors, building a fulfilling creative life marked by continuous evolution and the exploration required to chart new paths.

That's what this newsletter is really about: creative flourishing and creative leverage. Building a satisfying and meaningful creative life for yourself, and using systems and technology to support you on that journey.

A reality check on who I serve

I need to be clear about who I want to serve. If you're looking for something just to help you succeed in the tech industry, I'm not your guide. I'm more interested in what I'd call the "post-tech professional" — people who aren't focused on climbing tech career ladders but rather in finding success on their own terms, using technology.

I know many creative people who have had successful tech careers and the reality is that they're often left wondering how to thrive despite their professional and financial success. They feel more lost than ever when they consider stepping away because there's no benchmark for what success looks like. They know on some level that their fulfillment lies in uncharted territory, but have a hard time pursuing new paths that feel more aligned.

That's the space I want to explore.

Four changes to align this project to its purpose

For this project to be sustainable long-term, I need to optimize for what energizes me. Here's what I'm adjusting:

I'm expanding what I write about. I care about many topics more than I care about the tech industry: the arts, community, style, travel, philosophy, AI applications and implications, and more. Product design is my day job, but it's not my passion. And honestly, a lot of what sets me apart as a product designer is the breadth of my studies outside of tech. As a foundational rule, I don't want my writing to be tangential to the things I care about — I want it to be the channel through which I share those things.
I'm changing my publish day to Monday morning (pacific time). Working full-time means I often don't have dedicated writing time until the weekend. I need the full weekend to make sure I can do the work without feeling too crunched.
I'm not going to force publish to hit a certain cadence. I aim to publish as often as possible to exercise the muscle, but I'm not going to force an idea out just to hit the weekly mark. At this point, I've done lots of quantity. It's time for more quality.
I'm going to start making video content. In a world where text is increasingly filtered through AI, there's something about speaking my words that feels increasingly important. If nothing else, it enables a kind of authenticity that's different and complementary to what I can share through words alone.

Moving forward

This isn't a hard pivot, but rather an attempt to focus and reengergize. As someone with broad interests and skills, I'm always tempted to try to be all things to all people, but I'm trying to accept that I can't be. Expanding what I write about might seem like going broader, but it's actually going deeper — focusing on who I'm serving rather than what subjects I'm covering. I'm excited about what becomes possible if I allow myself to follow this thread.

Unknown Arts is about evolving in service of authenticity and creative flourishing. I want to model what that looks like for the community: the honesty about what isn't working, the courage to step away from performance in favor of alignment, and the willingness to follow genuine energy even when it's less predictable than safer directions.

Thank you for being part of this journey. I'm excited about where we're headed, even as we discover what that looks like together.

Until next time,

Patrick