Field Note 1.5: No Shortcuts, Just Company
Introducing the Podcast
In the last waypoint, we paused to catch our breath, take in the view, and begin again. But that moment — at the close of Chapter One — wasn’t just a rest on a trail. It was a pause in life. A chance to look around, to reflect. A small, sacred space where the mind can catch up with the body, and attention can catch up with meaning.
If this project has a purpose, it’s to protect and open those kinds of spaces.
Ours is a world that trains us to skip ahead — to click the next video, the next ad, the next outrage. It trains us to disconnect: from our senses, our minds, our lives. From Now — the only thing that is certainly real.
But truth doesn’t live at that pace. It’s older than our feeds. It’s quieter than the headlines. It waits beneath the noise, subtle as the steady rhythm in your chest. And to hear it, we have to slow down. To listen. To notice the details we’re usually too busy to see.
That’s why No Shortcuts to Now is now a podcast.
Each Waypoint will be released in audio — meditative essays read aloud, in the same voice that wrote them. Not a voice shouting. Not a voice selling. Just a voice walking beside you, steady on the trail. Listening. Wondering. Observing.
🎧 The first episode is now live:
Waypoint 1.1 — “Vulcan’s Evangelist”
A story about volcanoes, myth, and the boy who dragged me up the mountain.
You’ll find it right here on Substack — just scroll down from this post, or visit the main page. Since this is the very first audio drop, you might get two emails today — one for this note, and one for the episode. I promise I’m not spamming you. Just getting things rolling. Future releases will be more streamlined.
If the written words stirred something, I hope the voice brings it closer. Reading and hearing offer different things — and each gives shape to the other.
And because the path ahead sometimes looks steep or strange, I hope you’ll stay on the trail with me.
There are no shortcuts to Now. But there is company.
See you Tuesday,
— KL Homme