Magic Is Real. I've Always Known.

I've never not believed in magic.

I know that's a weird thing to say for a guy who writes smart contracts and debugs APIs at 4 AM. People expect the tech guy to be the rational one. The spreadsheet brain. The "show me the data" guy.

I am that guy. I'm also the guy who books flights because a song reminded him of something he can't name. Both things are true. They've always been true.

Magic is not the opposite of logic. Magic is what logic can't reach. It's the remainder. The part left over after you've explained everything you can explain and there's still something there. Still a feeling. Still a timing that makes no sense. Still a door that opened when every door was supposed to be closed.

Here's what I think people get wrong: they think you have to earn magic. That you have to unlock it, or find it, or deserve it. You don't. Magic is the default. It's already happening. All the time. To everyone.

Most people just aren't paying attention.

A guide in Iceland told me: "Stop chasing. Attract." He was talking about the northern lights. I'd been staring at clouds for three nights, willing the sky to perform. Nothing. The night I let go — sat in the van, drank bad coffee, stopped looking — the sky went green for hours.

That's magic. Not the sky. The letting go.

I wrote a letter to myself on New Year's Eve once. It said: "The plan this year is that I'll put myself in a place where magic can happen and hope that it does."

I've read it back every year since. And every year, I'm surprised by how much of it came true. Not because I wished for it. Because I moved towards it. Because I stayed open to it. Because I treated magic not as something that might happen to me, but as something that's already happening. My only job is to not get in the way.

Magic is real. It's been real my whole life. The only thing I've had to do is stay out of its way and keep showing up to places where it might find me.

That's not faith. That's just experience.

-I.R.