Fab’s Friday Field Notes
Note: Publishing Sunday instead of Friday – the whole family caught some bug this week. Which is itself a reminder: presence sometimes means being sick together, not performing productivity.
I’ve been thinking about the friends I’m losing. Not through conflict or distance or falling out. Through something quieter and more insidious.
My closest friends – the ones I’ve known since we were young, when everything was foolish and exhilarating, when being together didn’t require scheduling or justification – we’re letting that way of being slip away.
A video call squeezed between meetings. A few messages in a group chat. A speedy ski tour before rushing back to our separate obligations.
We perform friendship instead of being friends. We schedule connection like it’s a deliverable, allocate the minimum viable time, then return to whatever feels more urgent. And that unstructured time – the spontaneous adventures, the conversations that only happen when nobody’s watching the clock – it’s fading.
I feel guilty about this. Because I know what’s required, and I’m not doing it.
What presence actually looks like
My daughters want to climb and ski more this year. Not because they saw an influencer on Instagram. Not because an algorithm suggested it. They want these things because they’ve experienced them with me, with real people, in genuine relationship.
The anticipation isn’t for the summit selfie. It’s for shared suffering. Mutual encouragement. The specific joy of doing hard things alongside people who actually matter.
That distinction – between authentic experience and performed content – haunts me. Because I see it so clearly with my kids, and I’m failing to protect it with my oldest friends.
The extraction we’ve normalised
There’s a pattern running through everything now. Outdoor influencer culture produces people who confuse documentation with experience and followers with friends. Meta converts human connection into engagement metrics. Corporate “partnerships” extract value while performing collaboration. Even friendship gets optimised – scheduled, compressed, made efficient.
The common thread: taking something genuine and converting it into something that can be measured. The performance of the thing replaces the thing itself.
And audiences – whether Instagram followers or LinkedIn connections – are extractive by nature. They require constant feeding. They vanish when you’re actually struggling.
This week I convinced four people to move to Signal. Four humans choosing genuine communication over surveillance capitalism. Against billions still feeding the machine, four feels like nothing. But those are four actual relationships. That matters more than four thousand followers who’ve never caught me on a climb.
Preparation as resistance
This week wasn’t glamorous. No summits. No epic rides. Website updates. Job descriptions. Legal frameworks. Partnership structures. None of it content-worthy.
But here’s what that unglamorous work enables: genuine presence during the adventures ahead. Wines2Whales in South Africa isn’t networking disguised as recreation. The Dolomites ski tours aren’t content opportunities. They’re where relationships recharge me. Where my daughters learn – through experience, not performance – that the point isn’t the post. It’s the people.
The work creates space to be fully present. Not performing. Not documenting for algorithmic validation. Actually there.
The uncomfortable part
Growth requires discomfort. And resisting extractive patterns is deeply uncomfortable.
Choosing Signal means smaller networks. Critiquing influencer culture risks alienating people. Demanding reciprocal partnerships is slower and messier. Being present means missing “content opportunities.” Protecting unstructured time means saying no to things that feel urgent.
But we don’t build anything meaningful through extraction.
So here’s what I’m committing to, publicly, because accountability matters:
Before the end of January, I’m organising actual time with my oldest friends. Not a video call. Not a quick ski before rushing home. Real time – a weekend, maybe longer – where we can be foolish and present and not performing anything for anyone. Where the relationship itself is the point.
I don’t know if we can get that way of being back. But I know it won’t survive if we don’t prioritise it.
Your turn
Who are you losing through efficiency? What relationship have you been performing instead of building?
The mountains don’t care about your follower count. Your climbing partner cares whether you’re actually present when they need you. Your oldest friends will remember whether you showed up – really showed up – or just performed connection while your attention was already extracting the next thing.
That’s the line worth holding.
Who do you need to call this week – not to schedule something, but to protect something?
See you in unstructured time with people who matter.