21.10.2026 Diary LI Fratres: two years and what a name carries

21.10.2026 Diary Page LI

Counting a business's age is easy. The hard part is being able to see what has grown inside that age.

Wednesday. Today is 21 October, and today is Fratres' second birthday.

Before writing this sentence I looked at the blank page for a while. Because I had been keeping this diary with concepts, and today I can't begin with a concept. Today's word is a name. Not my name, but a name written on a door by my hand.

The brothers inside a name

Fratres means brothers in Latin. Frater is brother, fratres is its plural.

I carry this name in two things in my life. One is the company I founded. The other is Arvo Pärt's piece from 1977. I've written about the piece three times in this diary: in the akrasia entry while describing the shift inside repetition, in the family resemblance entry while putting two different Pärts side by side, in the aporia entry while looking for the calm of the impasse.

I haven't written the story of the name on this page. Some stories become thin when they go onto a page, and I don't want that for a heavy name. The day I want to write it will be some day other than today.

Let me just say this: when the word brotherhood fits into so many words and turns into so few concrete things, it takes courage to write it on the door of a company. A name makes a promise. For two years I've been trying to live up to that promise.

Naming twice

When I think about it, I have named something twice in my life, and the resemblance between the two surprises me.

The first was at twenty-two, when I accepted the diagnosis. Nothing about me had changed that day; as I wrote in the aletheia entry, only the cover over it had been lifted. My messiness, my putting things off, my never-ending half-finished tasks had been given a name, and that name gave me a ground instead of shame.

The second was the day I gave a business a name. Again, nothing changed by itself. There was an idea and an intention. But once the name was given, the idea became something that could be talked about, called upon, taken responsibility for.

In both, the name didn't bring something into being; it made what existed carryable. This is what carrying a diagnosis and carrying a business have in common: first it has to have a name so you can put it on your shoulder.

Seven hundred and thirty days

From 21 October 2024 to 21 October 2026 there are seven hundred and thirty days. While calculating the number I checked it once more, because I don't trust my own time blindness. Seven hundred and thirty.

Early in this diary I wrote about kairos and chronos: one kind of time is measured on the calendar, the other by opportunity and ripeness. Seven hundred and thirty days is chronos. When I look at this number I don't feel anything. What I feel are the kairoi left behind the number: the day an idea first settled, the moment a piece of work first set off, the morning a mistake was first forgiven.

I can't count which day was which, all of them. The ADHD mind doesn't like chronology. It holds memory not day by day but by its feeling. That's why I remember my two years not like a calendar but like a map: some cities are very clear, the roads between them faint.

Starting and keeping going

With ADHD, starting is always described as a problem: task paralysis, the body waiting at the threshold. Building a business, though, is the biggest kind of starting. What's new is attractive; the thing called hyperfocus kicks in exactly here, and in the first weeks the mind lights up like a lamp.

But what the second year showed me is something else: the light coming on is easy, keeping it lit is hard. The excitement of the first year gives way in the second year to a kind of endurance, and this endurance isn't as showy as excitement. Sitting down at the same desk in the morning. Picking up the half-finished work in the evening. Instead of quitting because you're bored, keeping going together with the boredom.

I won't say this is easy. Most days it isn't easy. But two years proved one thing to me: someone with ADHD can keep going, as long as they build the way of keeping going according to their own nervous system. Someone else's discipline didn't suit me. My own rhythm, with its flaws, did.

A business with no door, two years later

In a diary entry I wrote in September I wrote that my own business has no door. I have a business that doesn't stay where I left it; it follows me.

I reread that entry today and I have no objection. But I want to add one thing, because that's what an anniversary is for: a business with no door also has a window.

One of the most important things I've learned in two years is this: when someone with ADHD builds their own business, they lose the scaffolding that comes from outside. No class schedule, no teacher chasing you, no manager saying "this task will be finished this week". You have to build the scaffolding yourself. That's why I described the two faces of being an entrepreneur and the irregularity of freelancing in separate articles. What I wrote there isn't knowledge on paper; most of it came from the things I needed where my work got stuck.

The window is this: on the day I can build my own scaffolding, that scaffolding fits me. An order someone else built didn't fit me. Mine is flawed, but it suits me.

An anniversary for someone with ADHD

Celebrating an anniversary is a separate skill. You have to stop and look back, and the ADHD mind usually moves on to the next thing. Before I've savoured a task I've finished, I'm at the start of another one. Success is a moment, followed right away by a new list.

Today I want to do the opposite. To close the list for one day and look at what the two years have left in me.

I find three things.

The first is patience. What I tried to write about in the hypomone entry: staying under a load and enduring, without trying to get free as soon as possible. Building a business is largely the name for this.

The second is being a little fairer to myself. I wrote in September that I stopped fighting myself. Two years were a good laboratory for trying this: I saw that punishing myself on days when things went badly fixed nothing, it only made the next day heavier.

The third is gratitude. I'll come to that in the next paragraph.

Thank you

I thank everyone who has put effort into me, trusted me and been patient with me in these two years. I won't give names here. They already know who is who, and a diary page isn't the real place for a thank-you. But I'm writing it on the page so that it is written: a business isn't built alone. I wrote the name on the door. The ones who light the light inside are others.

While writing this sentence there's a warmth inside me, and it has nothing to do with this being "a good piece of writing". It's just true.

Three promises for the third year

Making a promise is like giving a name: a heavy task, and then you're under it. That's why I'm keeping them small.

The first is building an exit door for the work. An hour, a threshold, a ritual; a line where I can say "this far". I wrote this in September too, but writing isn't building.

The second is counting walking as part of the work. For me walking isn't a break, it's a form of thinking. Most of the time my best ideas come not at the desk but on the road. I want to put this in the calendar not as a luxury but as a working method.

The third is to keep writing. This diary is the only thing within the two years of work that wasn't there a year ago. Writing here, I get to know myself better, and this changes my work too.

A piece next to the concept

Arvo Pärt: Fratres.

It was written in 1977 and later rearranged for very different line-ups: violin and piano, cello and piano, strings and percussion, and so on. The same melody comes each time with a different sound. I love that the same piece can live in so many forms.

I haven't decided which version I'll listen to today. Maybe none of them. Maybe on a walk, without headphones, playing the piece's silence in my mind.

Toward tomorrow

Tomorrow is Thursday, and the first day of Fratres' third year. There is something today's entry taught me: an anniversary isn't for counting the past, but for leaving a door open toward what's ahead. Tomorrow I'll go in through that door and sit down at the desk again.

One more sentence, to today itself: I'm glad I built it.