This week, I took a trip out to Video Consortium in Manhattan for their Future of Nonfiction Video conference, for a deep dive into understanding journalism distribution, the craft of storytelling, audience development, channels for media, and so on.
This, interestingly, came about from a fascinating chain of events: late in 2025, I cold-emailed the chief editor of Creator Spotlight, a publication on growing and monetizing creator-led businesses, about what makes a top 1% newsletter. Surprisingly, I got an incredibly thorough and thoughtful reply back, which led to a LinkedIn connection, which led to seeing a post about Video Consortium, which allowed me a first look into the world of newsletter media and investigative journalism. That same week, I booked a ticket out.
Historically, growing up, I was very introverted and wary of strangers; the Midwest can do that to you. However, because I was raised on the Internet, I had an incredible amount of global culture access that I freely drank from, and over time, especially after college, I found stronger confidence to engage people seriously and work towards solving really difficult challenges together (see: startup life). Lots of breaking old patterns and habits, opening my mind to different mental models of the world, and so on.
It's difficult to express yourself in a sandbox, or in a single environment where things do not change as quickly as you do - to mold your mind and body to your whims, to see the fruits of your labors slowly blossom. Many people do not listen to their inner voice, or the callings they have in their mind: they do not eke out the little splinter egging at them, and silently suppress the nature which makes them powerful in the first place.
In contrast to that timid nature, the actual early months of 2026 were filled with building my latest product, ApplySpy (an AI-agent powered company intelligence platform for job seekers) - and I got it out just in time for flying out. During that same time, with OpenClaw reaching public attention, dozens of digital communities popped up around it, and I joined a particularly exemplary one filled with prominent pioneers in software and hardware engineering.
Now, we're all figuring out the best ways to build AI agents on self-owned sovereign infrastructure. One of them in Manhattan (previously a founding designer at Imgur) even invited me to their company office to talk and tinker AI agents with their staff engineers. Seriously frontier stuff, and something my past self a decade ago wouldn't have even dreamed of.
(the cool company office, redacted to protect the innocent)
I'm reminded of the story of Hideo Kojima (video game director and absolute cinematic goat): he's famous for creating and directing the Metal Gear series, and later, the Death Stranding series, to critical acclaim. Known for being radically, candidly authentic, he's been quoted as saying: "if I like something, I put it in". He even put his favorite Vtuber inside the game. That sort of uncompromising vision, that ability to just do things, is a superpower in a world where your idiosyncrasies are increasingly your greatest strength.
If you're wondering about doing the thing, do it. Expand the surface area of possibilities you can give your mind and body. Be vulnerable to the world, to the people around you, and see what flourishes from it. You'll look cringe? So what? We're on a blue dot accelerating around the Sun at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, and you're worried about your neurons and artificial notions of social standing. You'll be fine, I promise.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite songs I discovered, on the Death Stranding 2 soundtrack: To The Wilder:
To all the walls that we are meant to break
The part of us that still remains untamed
We must be more than animals in chains
It's a poison that kills
Would you let the wind tell you where to go
If you can brave fate and prove it wrong?
...
To all the mountains, all the rivers
To all the strays, the trailblazers
To what it takes to walk forever
To what it takes to be who we are
Who we are
To the wilder
To the wilder
To the wilder you
Be well,
Michael Kirsanov
Written from Seoul Sweets on 308 5th Ave