Thread 007: The Unexpected Detours of Golden Threads
On following creative instincts, embracing professional evolution, and how seemingly divergent paths weave into our larger story...
I've always been fascinated by those moments in stories when the protagonist sets out on what they believe is a clear, direct path—only to find themselves wandering through unexpected forests, crossing unanticipated rivers, or climbing mountains that weren't visible from where they began. The hero never follows a straight line. The journey worth taking is rarely the one we planned.
This past month has been my own unexpected forest, my unanticipated river, my surprise mountain.
When I last wrote to you, I was mapping a deliberate path toward my three-cities dream—Barcelona's artistic streets, Mallorca's ancient wisdom, and Toronto's grounding embrace. I imagined documenting a year of preparation, a linear progression of research, planning, and transformation leading to next February's departure.
But golden threads, it seems, delight in taking us on detours.
Four weeks ago, I received an unexpected message about a community-building role at a tech startup called Blaze. It felt tangential to my path, but something in me whispered to follow—if only for the conversation. What was meant to be a 30-day trial to explore compatibility became, in just four days, an enthusiastic offer to join their team.
I found myself standing at one of those narrative crossroads that make stories worth reading. The path I'd been following with such clarity suddenly forked in a direction I hadn't anticipated. And surprisingly, both directions felt right in completely different ways.
This is where many of us are taught to see conflict—career versus dream, practicality versus passion, stability versus adventure. But as I sat with this unexpected turn, I began to recognize something that great storytellers have always known: the most compelling journeys embrace the "and" rather than the "or."
When Life Writes Plot Twists
I think about Julia Child, who moved to France with her husband when he was stationed there for work. Her plan wasn't to become a celebrated chef—she initially struggled even to find her place. But something called to her in the markets of Paris, in the unfamiliar ingredients, in the techniques she didn't yet understand. She followed that call, not realizing it would lead to revolutionizing American home cooking and becoming a cultural icon.
Her path wasn't linear; it was responsive. She followed her curiosity through unexpected doors, and in doing so, discovered her life's work in a place she never anticipated.
Or consider Leonard Cohen, who retreated to a Zen monastery for five years, only to discover upon his return that his longtime manager had emptied his accounts, stealing millions. This financial catastrophe forced him back on tour in his seventies—a devastating blow that resulted in one of the most acclaimed late-career renaissances in musical history. What seemed like financial ruin became an unexpected gift, both to him and to audiences worldwide.
These stories remind me that the most interesting lives are rarely built on perfect execution of original plans. They're built on attentiveness to unexpected openings, on the courage to step through doors we didn't even know existed.
The Digital City Between Cities
My work at Blaze feels like one of these unexpected openings. On the surface, it might seem like a detour from my three-cities vision. But as I settle into this role, I'm discovering something surprising: I'm actually building a fourth city—a digital one.
Each day, I help architect spaces where thousands of people come to learn, connect, and build their own dreams. I map out neighborhoods of conversation, design plazas for gathering, create pathways for discovery. This community becomes its own kind of city, with distinct cultures, rituals, and languages. It has weather patterns of engagement, seasons of growth and reflection, landmarks that orient members to their place in the larger whole.
The skills this work requires are strikingly similar to those I'll need for creating a life between physical cities: adaptability, attunement to different cultural contexts, the ability to create home in multiple spaces simultaneously. Each day at Blaze becomes not a diversion from my dream but a masterclass in preparing for it.
I find myself thinking of Hemingway's years as a journalist, work that many might have seen as simply paying bills while he pursued his "real" calling of fiction. Yet his journalistic training—the economy of language, the sharp observation, the ability to capture essential truths in simple statements—became the very foundation of the writing style that would revolutionize American literature. What seemed like a day job was actually an apprenticeship for his art.
The Long Game of Golden Threads
The Mediterranean still calls to me—perhaps even more strongly now that I'm building a foundation that will eventually support that dream with greater stability. Barcelona's modernist curves and Mallorca's ancient stones haven't faded in my imagination; they've simply taken their place in a more expansive vision that includes this digital city I'm helping to build.
I still research apartments in the Eixample district during lunch breaks. I still practice my Spanish in quiet moments. I still collect books about Mediterranean cooking and culture. But now these activities feel less like preparation for an either/or choice and more like threads in a richer tapestry that's being woven across continents and contexts.
This reminds me of how W.B. Yeats spent years studying the occult, mysticism, and Irish folklore—pursuits many of his contemporaries viewed as distractions from his poetry. Yet these studies became the symbolic language that gave his later work its extraordinary power and resonance. What looked like wandering away from his path was actually a gathering of essential materials for his greatest work.
Perhaps our golden threads know what they're doing, even when their patterns seem puzzling to us.
The Generosity of Detours
There's a generosity in surrendering to the detour, in trusting that the thread knows where it's leading even when we can't see the full pattern yet. In Japanese tradition, there's a practice called michi-no-ku, which roughly translates to "the space between." It acknowledges that the journey between two points is not merely transit but a space of discovery, of unexpected beauty, of its own kind of meaning.
I'm finding my own michi-no-ku in this unanticipated chapter. Building community at Blaze is teaching me about belonging across distance, about creating home in digital spaces, about holding multiple identities simultaneously. Each day brings lessons I couldn't have planned to learn—lessons that will serve me when I eventually create my physical life between cities.
The financial stability this role provides is transformative as well. What was once a dream requiring careful saving and strategic planning now has more breathing room, more possibility. Barcelona and Mallorca haven't moved farther away; they've simply gained a stronger foundation from which to launch.
And perhaps most surprisingly, this work is revealing aspects of my creative voice I might never have discovered otherwise. There's a poetry in community architecture, a narrative craft in building digital neighborhoods, a worldbuilding artistry in creating spaces where thousands feel they belong. These skills are not separate from my identity as a writer and creator—they're an unexpected expansion of it.
Where Two Dreams Meet
I think about Joan Didion, who seamlessly moved between journalism, screenwriting, novels, and memoir throughout her career. Each form informed and enriched the others; each seemingly separate path ultimately revealed itself as part of a singular, multifaceted journey. What unified her work wasn't adherence to a single medium or role, but a consistent sensibility, a particular quality of attention that she brought to everything she created.
This is what I'm discovering in my own unexpected turn: that my essential thread isn't a particular location or professional identity, but a way of seeing and creating. Whether I'm building brand worlds for clients, crafting essays for The Raconteuse, designing community spaces at Blaze, or planning my future life between three beloved cities—I'm doing the same fundamental work of creating worlds where belonging feels natural, where stories unfold organically, where magic happens in the everyday.
The golden thread hasn't changed direction; it's simply revealed more of its complexity.
The Art of Holding Both
So here I am, learning the art of holding both: the immediate reality of building a digital community and the horizon dream of a life between three cities. Neither diminishes the other. Neither asks me to choose. They exist in a relationship of mutual enrichment, each lending strength and insight to the other.
I think of Patti Smith, who withdrew from public life for sixteen years to raise her children in a quiet Detroit suburb—a chapter many would see as contradictory to her identity as punk poet and performer. Yet when she returned to music, this period of ordinary life had deepened her work immeasurably. The domesticity that might have seemed at odds with her artistic persona actually expanded her creative range.
Or consider Toni Morrison, who worked as an editor at Random House for nineteen years while writing her revolutionary novels. This wasn't a compromise of her literary ambitions but a complementary path that expanded her understanding of publishing, writing, and the stories that needed telling. Her "day job" and her art weren't competing identities but different expressions of her essential self.
This is the wisdom I'm embracing now: that our lives are capacious enough to hold seemingly different dreams in relationship to each other. That sometimes what looks like a detour is actually the path. That our golden threads know what they're doing, even when—especially when—they surprise us.
A Continuing Rhythm
As this new chapter unfolds, The Raconteuse will maintain its steady heartbeat. These weekly letters will continue—adapting to include new territories, more dimensions, unexpected beauty found in both familiar and unfamiliar places.
The three-cities dream remains vibrant at the horizon. Barcelona's modernist curves and hidden Gothic courtyards still wait to be discovered. Mallorca's cliffs still call with their ancient whispers. Toronto's familiar streets still ground me in the immediate magic of now. And joining them, this digital city I'm helping to build at Blaze—a city without geography but full of human connection, creative possibility, and unexpected poetry.
All of these spaces are now part of my golden thread's journey. All of them have something to teach me about worldbuilding, about belonging, about creating home in multiple dimensions simultaneously.
And isn't that, ultimately, what it means to follow the thread wherever it leads? Not to insist on a predetermined destination, but to remain attentive to the path as it reveals itself—with all its surprising turns, its unexpected vistas, its hidden treasures that we could never have planned to find.
With warmth and curiosity for where the thread leads next,
Fatima
P.S. I'd love to hear about the unexpected detours your own golden threads have taken. What surprise turns in your path initially seemed like distractions but ultimately enriched your journey? What forests, rivers, or mountains appeared that weren't visible when you began? The comments are open, and I read each one with gratitude for your companionship on this winding path.