are all-encompassing.

I truly mean that.

It's hard to grasp what that means.

ALL is a huge little word. Encompassing everything seems impossible. And yet, with Alexandra, this seems to be occurring. And with others to a lesser extent but Alex highlights the impact best.

Specifically to me, it appears all my social needs are being met by her alone. This is wild. This includes work, friendship, novelty, so much outside of a standard girlfriend boyfriend life partner frame, as one thing among many.

My blog audience for example, was always mostly for my future self and incidentally for friends and family peeking into my skull as i output. Now I don't even need to blog. I just talk to Alex and I feel satisfied.

Some might say this is unhealthy or codependent or some stupid diagnosis without analyzing any symptoms. Let me explain the symptoms. It starts where most relationships buckle under stress: money or lack thereof, work, financial shit, career spoils.

Often, tech companies have a policy of "demo Fridays" or something similar. This practice is fluid, nothing like agile scrum whatever. Just imagine small and mid-sized startups or teams in large orgs gathering around a proverbial campfire.

Volunteers or a rotating roster of employees do a kind of all-hands rapid-fire showcase of what they're working on. Say 5 minutes each, or 60 seconds to share, whatever: the elevator pitch, wireframe walkthru, prototype in progress. Q&A optional. Maybe just a free-for-all lunch after.

It's a great forcing function for creativity as well as progress, and I believe Elon is one of the masters of the demo as was Steve Jobs. The juices flow in all the heads: founder CEO, core employees, shareholders, customers, hard short sellers and long softies behind the index funds, kids who hear the world just changed and we are heading to Mars...

In our household, we are now doing Friday demos, just me and Alex. We're each sharing something we shipped the previous week. She showed me her spotify playlist (it was so cool, nothing i'd heard before) and I should her my claude coded landing page.

For my demo, I walked thru from prototype to mid-launch (it's new and pretty now, available below click "about andy" i think) so she could learn from my prompts and where i get inspired. Eg: Mina's landing page and the Sandbar story which I saw up close and personal, for years before the company existed.

Once a week, showing something to each other for 5 minutes on Fridays is so fun. It doesn't have to be big. It can be very small. It can be ugly. It can get better next week, but it's something that we commit to at the appointed time on Fridays.

We're in kindergarten again. Why was show & tell one of the first things to vanish in first grade? Ms Day could have done what Ms Hurtado did, at Oriole Lane in Mequon.

I've not heard of any other relationships that do Friday demos in the same way a startup does, but Alex and I both share a creative impulse, which is an intellectually fulfilling, project-oriented mindset around things that make us happy and further our personal goals. We met at a used book store, her checking out my massive Ayn Rand purchase and disclosing with a soft smile, "Atlas Shrugged was my favorite book when I was 14 and I re-read it every 2 years since."

From hanging with friends to personal art projects to Stardew Valley and cooking nutritious vitamin-supplemented meals, we've converged on semi-stochastic constraints. For example, when we exercise, we each have different goals and needs but we still try to go to the gym with each other if we can and it's not too much hassle. Or with our personal websites, projects like her doing book reviews on Letterboxd or me doing my blog posts, et cetera...

The Friday Demo is a place to talk about something meaningful to us. Maybe even just a real conversation with her mom or my sister that we prepped for, because we care about those relationships and people.

Right now, I'm applying to jobs, so I demo'd something relating to that, and she said, "This is literally so fun. It's so inspiring." Now I'm looking forward to seeing her demo of the week and all the weeks to come.

This is not a blog post about Friday demos or that relationships should be based on any sort of production function—although per Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, we both believe they should. (I'm happy to have found my skyscraper and the woman on top of it.)

It's more of a blog post about how miraculously horizon-expanding it is to live with someone you love dearly, deeply, and also respect on a spiritual level across all facets in life, being able to see that even if they don't have the background or experience that you do, and vice versa, you can both be patient with each other and spend loving time in harmonious movement.

I never like having plants but I got her a potted foxtrot and now she's showing me how it's alive and needs talking to, it tells us when its leaves are wilting, etc.

I wasn't sure at first if the one-bedroom apartment would grow us together or apart in healthy organic ways or more radical identity-transforming ones that might require more work on at least one of our ends.

Now, I'm fairly confident that the best relationships are all-encompassing to such a degree that you can simply be yourself, growing into your future self, and it's accelerated and supported by the other.

We both are radically transforming, each day, together.

Some days are lazy, some pass slowly and some in the blink of a flower. But the same principle applies to the very best friendships, the very best pets, whatever you relate to. Maybe colleagues or bosses or mentors even.

The best relationships truly are all-encompassing, and it's okay to talk about your deepest, darkest inner things: a baby fledgling idea you have, a way to change the world and show what you've done to effect that idea into reality for 5 minutes, even if it seems very far-fetched and potentially crazy at the outset.

Seeds. We say unhinged things to each other all the time because they're jokes, because they're part of our internal language, because we have the values, trust, and the serious conversations to balance out the light-hearted day-to-day. To let things grow.

I've never experienced this before, and it honestly changes my relationship to blogging and all other activities. Instead of posting on YouTube or trying to teach other people skills, I only need to teach her things, as well as myself—by listening to her.

Notice I'm not saying to neglect something, but rather just pay attention to the present moment. Shrinking the scope of my desires helps me focus on going faster in the dimensions that matter. Including for the projects that actually might ship to the masses someday, when I turn my head away from her face and towards my screen.

As someone who has shipped things to the masses, I know how hard it is, and I know how easy it is to be distracted by visions of realities that don't come to pass. All the best builders want to build so much more than they are able to, because once you start building, you realize what's possible.

What's possible tomorrow is far beyond anyone's wildest dreams, just last night.