FIELD NOTES

I visited an estate sale the other day. The house, built in the mid-1970s and designed by an architect, had that rare quality of becoming a world unto itself. It wasn’t just a structure—it was an environment, a philosophy rendered in wood and glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows, tabby concrete, a small prayer room tucked by the entry, and custom doors carved with a repeating motif that echoed through the trim work and furnishings. Everywhere, you felt the presence of a singular vision—intent carried across 6,000 square feet.

Everyone wants to dream. Fewer want to own. Fewer still want to operate.
But somewhere between vision and exit strategy lies the unglamorous, enduring work of keeping things going. That work—rarely spotlighted—is where I’ve learned the most.

When my wife and I bought our first house in 2015, we were 27, broke, and all-in. We did nearly everything ourselves. We got flooded. We rebuilt. And in the process, we found something larger than homeownership: a break from abstraction. From desk work. From the mental churn. A chance to move, to make, to solve. It wasn’t a side hobby. It was the beginning of something deeper.

Tyler Cowen, the economist known for his intellectual omnivory, has argued that every thinker and artist is, in some essential way, a philosopher of place. That is, where we come from—our geography, our culture, our soil—shapes how we think. The air, the architecture, the rhythm of local life all leave marks on our inner logic. And he’s right. The intellectual soil of Paris yields a different worldview than the arid sprawl of Texas.