“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” — John Stuart Mill

Years ago, I wrote about an “Evergreen Content Forest.” At the time, I thought I was writing about the durability and legacy of the essays I was writing to post online. But looking back, I was writing with a plantation mindset, not a true growth mindset.

My “forest” was designed with a blueprint. I’d plant ideas but tend them only to catch the “long-tail” keywords for search engine optimization purposes. I didn’t care about ‘likes,’ but I was obsessed with ‘utility.’ I wanted my writing to be useful and to be found. I did want every piece I wrote to retain some long-term utility as part of a wider SEO strategy. Unfortunately, this means I began to treat my curiosity like a machine, like Mill said,  “set to do exactly the work prescribed for it,” That meant to capture traffic, to be useful, and to be found.

The problem with a plantation is that it isn’t alive. It has no “inward forces” but only external metrics. Because of that, many of those old essays, while technically “evergreen,” feel dead to me now. Some of them are still preserved in my ‘vault’, like plastic plants, rather than living things that continue to breathe.

Real trees don’t grow in straight lines. They’re naturally defined by their asymmetry. A tree growing on a ridge line will look entirely different from a tree growing in a valley. It twists and leans, growing heavy branches on its south side to catch the sun and staying barren on the north. To a machine-maker, a twisted tree is a defect. It doesn’t fit the model, as it’s especially hard to mill into lumber.

But to the ecologist, or someone with a similar mindset, the twist is the proof of life. That asymmetry is the record of the tree’s conversation with its environment. It’s taken me years, but I’ve come to realize that my “heavy” ideas—the ones that matter to me—are rarely symmetrical. They don’t fit into neat SEO categories. They don’t always intertwine, but when they do, I find them connecting in ways that don’t look logical on a spreadsheet but make perfect sense underground, where the roots tangle together. These are the ideas that intrigue me the most, and thus I wish to write about them more than your more ‘flattened’ SEO-friendly topics.

When we demand that our writing be “useful” or “optimized” immediately, we starve the roots. We force our trees to grow straight and fast, resulting in soft wood that rots quickly. My goal these days isn’t building an optimized forest, but rather feeding the soil organically. I’m looking for the “inward forces” Mill mentioned—like the unexpected connections between a book on Victorian economics, a conversation with my wife about tension, and the texture of the morning fog in Vermont.

These ideas might look unrelated. They might look “asymmetric.” But if you turn them the right way around, you see that they are all drinking from the same water table.

We need fewer content machines and more living trees. It’s vital that we nurture our ideas so that they’re allowed to be weird, lopsided, and slow-growing. I’m done planting row crops and I’m letting the forest grow “on all sides,” however it chooses to grow.