you can’t fork a state if you can’t fork yourself
context obesity and the $1m lesson on biological sovereignty
incident report: 2022 to 2024
incident type: liquidity crisis
root cause: context switching (too many active contexts)
loss assessment: ~$1m balance-sheet drawdown + insolvency events
patch applied: 3-node constraint protocol
22:30.
you’re not tired. you’re optimistic. the dangerous kind.
you open one problem set “just to warm up.” then a second one “just to compare approaches.” then a chat log that needs “one quick reply.” then a phone call you shouldn’t take. then a “quick sync” that mutates into a two-hour tribunal.
each step belongs to a different project.
each project demands you pretend it’s the only one.
three hours later, you’re not clearer. you’re running a private museum of unfinished intentions – curating half-built worlds like they’re artifacts.
we all want network states, parallel civilizations, exit velocity.
and yet most of us can’t govern our own browser tabs.
the mechanics of ruin
i’m not writing this as a guru. i’m writing it as a casualty.
this is the part i’m embarrassed about
in 2022, my balance sheet looked like roughly $1m. about 20% was liquid – cash, bitcoin, an apartment, a car. in eastern europe, that’s not nothing. that’s a decent bunker. the rest lived in startup equity and illiquid bets: high potential energy, low withdraw button.
then came the fork: war. second forced migration. kyiv → lisbon.
and like every rational animal in an irrational world, i tried to hedge.
the physical world looked unstable, so i “diversified” into the digital one by adding seven parallel builds – projects, drafts, side bets, obligations, aspirations – and feeding them with logistics i called strategy: a flight i booked because “this room will have the right people,” an event i hosted to “gather the network,” a community i created to “help builders” that mostly helped everyone except my own runway.
i kept calling it strategy. it was avoidance.
then the invisible layer moved in: meetings. chats. favors. social gravity. family pings. dinners i said yes to out of guilt.
i thought i was building an ecosystem.
i was actually triggering a predictable cascade:
fragmentation: every new project adds meetings, threads, obligations, and “small” decisions.
latency: fragmented time kills shipping. nothing completes. nothing invoices.
cashflow gaps: income becomes irregular while life stays very regular (rent, relocation, debt, stress).
debt spiral: gaps get bridged with borrowing. borrowing adds obligations. obligations add cognitive load. cognitive load increases latency. latency widens the gaps.
i didn’t lose money on bad trades or crypto scams.
i lost it because i violated the physics of attention
i didn’t go from “paper assets” to zero.
i still had a bunker.
the problem was access: liquidity evaporates fast when you split yourself into seven half-alive processes.
the diagnosis: context obesity
we need a definition.
context obesity is when active contexts > cognitive ram.
“active context” means anything you feel responsible for this week. not someday. not “when i have time.” this week. if it generates guilt pings, it consumes memory.
in that state, you aren’t “busy.” you’re degraded. you’re running a throttled brain on overheating hardware, pretending the fan noise is productivity.
microsoft’s work trend data shows most people don’t get enough uninterrupted focus time to finish their own work. the communication layer eats the product layer.
and gloria mark’s research shows the average interruption costs ~23 minutes to fully return to a task.
do the math: you don’t need twenty projects to break deep work.
seven contexts plus pings plus anxiety already keep you below the re-entry threshold.
most days, nothing gets built.
just buffering.
sovereignty is a biological protocol
we talk about “sovereignty” like it’s legal paper. passports. flags. constitutions.
that’s the outer shell.
sovereignty is also a biological state.
steady nervous system. stable blood sugar. low cortisol noise. sleep that actually completes. silence that doesn’t feel like punishment.
enough uninterrupted time for one intention to survive contact with reality.
then the higher-level definition clicks:
sovereignty is self-custodied attention.
the operational ability to hold an intention – from first thought to finished artifact – without external corruption.
if your attention is owned by half-built startups, group chats, social obligations, family logistics, “quick calls,” random meetups, and a to-do list that reads like a prosecutor’s brief, sovereignty becomes cosplay. you stop steering and start reacting.
you can’t coordinate others if you can’t coordinate yourself.
you can’t fork a society if the genesis block – you – is already corrupted by noise.
the protocol: the holy trinity
this wasn’t fixed by “organizing better.”
and it definitely wasn’t brute-force willpower.
a constraint was installed.
IF (New Opportunity Arises):
CHECK: Is [Current_Active_Projects] < 3?
IF YES: Evaluate.
IF NO: REQUIRE [Kill_Existing_Project].
ELSE: REJECT immediately.
the operating system collapsed into exactly three active nodes.
node 1: stability
project: stay – digital transformation for a german insurance enterprise
function: liquidity, low emotional volatility. pays the debts. forces me to touch grass and legacy code.
node 2: growth
project: ai mindset – laboratory and AI edtech
function: real users, real product, growing market. the upside bet. if it stops shipping and compounding, it loses node status.
node 3: soul
project: 404embassy
function: r&d. a place to test sovereignty, publish patches, and connect with the guild.
everything else routes to /dev/null.
this is the only line of code that matters for 2026:
if i add one, i must kill one.
results didn’t arrive overnight. debts don’t vanish the day you close a tab.
but the noise stopped. the internal server rack finally spun down after a long, stupid overload.
i still relapse. i just relapse inside a smaller blast radius.
Ray Svitla
stay evolving 🐌