This morning I spent just over ten minutes pulling grass by hand.
Not because I had to.
Because I wanted to.
The soil was perfect.
Just enough moisture to loosen the roots. Just enough structure to hold together. I could slide my fingers underneath a clump of grass, lift carefully, crumble the dirt away, and reveal the entire root system intact.
It’s the gardening equivalent of peeling the protective film off a brand-new screen.
Deeply satisfying.
The kind of thing that makes people watch footage of someone silently working in a garden.
Gardeners know exactly what I’m talking about.
The rest of the world might call it boring.
What I Was Really Thinking About
As I worked, I kept thinking about the games I play on my phone.
Not the games themselves.
What they reveal.
Lately I’ve been drawn toward puzzle games where everything is tangled together.
Arrow puzzles.
Parking lot puzzles.
Games where the challenge isn’t speed.
It’s figuring out what has to move first.
The pieces aren’t broken.
They’re blocked.
The solution isn’t force.
It’s sequence.
One move creates space for the next move.
Then another.
Then another.
Until suddenly the entire thing starts flowing again.
Standing in the garden, staring at a knot of grass roots woven together beneath the soil, I realized I was solving exactly the same problem.
A Confession
Most people don’t know this about me.
I’m a serious gamer.
Not the headset-and-energy-drinks version.
The quiet version.
The person who becomes fascinated by how systems work.
Over the years I’ve accumulated more high scores, completed more challenges, and beaten more games than I can count. Somewhere along the way I stopped caring about the scoreboards.
What I really wanted to know was whether I could beat the system.
Not exploit it.
Understand it.
Learn its rules.
See the patterns.
Find the leverage points.
Outthink the designers who created it.
I’ve done it enough times that I no longer see games as entertainment alone.
They’re laboratories.
Tiny simulations that reveal how problems are structured.
And the games we choose often tell us something about ourselves.
Your Brain Is Trying To Tell You Something
I pay attention to the games I’m choosing.
Not because I’m worried about screen time.
Because they’re data.
Sometimes I find myself drawn toward long-term strategy games.
Sometimes quick wins.
Sometimes building games.
Sometimes puzzles.
Those choices tell me something about what my brain is trying to process.
When I’m overwhelmed, I gravitate toward order.
When things feel tangled, I gravitate toward untangling.
When life feels stuck, I find myself solving traffic jams.
Not on the road.
In games.
In gardens.
In notebooks.
In conversations.
The pattern repeats everywhere.
Physical Therapy Disguised As Gardening
This video captures something else too.
For a long time, my hands weren’t working the way they should.
Today they are stronger.
More coordinated.
More capable.
I can feel it.
Not because someone measured it.
Because I’m doing things that weren’t possible before.
Pinching roots.
Separating soil.
Manipulating fine structures without tearing them apart.
Gardening has quietly become physical therapy.
The kind that doesn’t feel like therapy.
The kind you willingly return to.
Because the work itself is rewarding.
Nature Keeps Teaching The Same Lesson
There’s a quote often attributed to Einstein:
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Whether he said it exactly that way or not, the idea holds.
Nature keeps showing us the same principles.
Roots.
Relationships.
Pressure.
Flow.
Adaptation.
Constraint.
Resilience.
Systems.
The answers rarely arrive as instructions.
They arrive as observations.
For The Person Feeling Stuck
This post is for the person whose life currently feels like a traffic jam.
The leader carrying too many decisions.
The parent trying to sort through competing priorities.
The entrepreneur staring at a tangled problem.
The quiet person who knows something needs to change but can’t yet see where to begin.
You may not need to move faster.
You may need to find the first root.
The first blockage.
The first move.
The piece that’s preventing everything else from flowing.
Because once that piece moves, the entire system often changes.
An Invitation
If you’re an Apple Arcade player, puzzle solver, strategy gamer, gardener, builder, tinkerer, or systems thinker, I’d love to know:
What game are you playing right now?
And what do you think it’s helping you work through?
I suspect the answer has less to do with the game than most people realize.
Closing
Maybe that’s why I find this sort of work so calming.
Whether it’s a garden bed.
A puzzle.
A business problem.
A family challenge.
Or my own recovery.
The process is surprisingly similar.
Slow down.
Look underneath.
Follow the pattern.
Remove what doesn’t belong.
Protect what does.
And trust that untangling one root at a time is still progress.
Video note: This post includes approximately 11 minutes of uninterrupted garden ASMR—just soil, roots, birdsong, and the satisfying process of teasing an entire root system free without breaking it apart.
Slingshot Designs 