I’ve been thinking a lot about the story I wrote about Automattic, in which I was pretty critical of Matt Mullenweg. And then after hitting the “Publish” button in WordPress — the button he created, essentially — I started feeling bad about that. And I found myself editing the published story and softening some of the more acerbic comments.

That was a story I wrote and rewrote a hundred times over a period of over a year, so editing that piece is a pretty entrenched habit of mine, meaning the actions of doing so are ones my body will start to engage in without my conscious mind directing me to do so. That’s how habits work.

All basal ganglia, no prefrontal cortex.

I wrote a little book on the subject — the science of habit formation, how you can control the process of the habits you create and the habits you don’t. The subject was popularized in the books The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits. I’m not an expert like the writers of those tomes, but I know more than most.

So yeah, it took me a moment to consider my actions. In fact, when I did, it was thoughts about Mullenweg’s treatment of his own blog that caused me to stop typing. He treats his blog as a kind of historical document, so he doesn’t make corrections after the fact. I believe that’s the case, I don’t know that he has ever declared that. But the errors and spelling mistakes and all of the youthful inexperience is still in his posts chronicling the early days of WordPress and Automattic. I find that pretty cool, definitely confident to put yourself out there like that. I hit undo about a dozen times, and I think I undid all my changes to that piece but I’m not totally sure.

So yeah, as you can see, my opinions and feelings about Mullenweg are kind of conflicted. Bipolar even. You know, I think he’s nice and I think he’s kinda cute, and he sets my gaydar off a little, which doesn’t mean anything, actually, because straight men set it off all the time. But my point is that I feel kind of a kinship with him, even after having written my fairly scathing critique. I veer from adoration to condemnation, from jealousy to empathy.

I have also considered the fact that my feelings may be actually because I wrote a scathing piece about him. The scathing part has nothing to do with it, though. It’s just that for over a year he took up a big piece of real estate in my brain. I imagine it must be similar to Stockholm Syndrome: being in proximity to someone for any length of time, even mental proximity, creates a kind of bond that is counter to common sense. More importantly, though, it affects one’s objectivity. It’s important for a writer to maintain a critical distance from his subject.

My theory actually, is that Schrödinger’s Cat isn’t just applicable to the invisible quantum world, but it also applies to our emotions and how we define people as well. The effect is I think more dramatic when you write about a person. Let me try to explain what I mean. The Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment is about how in quantum physics, atoms can have two different states concurrently, similar to a cat inside a box who has equal chances of being alive or dead.

Quantum mechanics says the cat is both alive and dead at the same time, and that it only assumes one of those states of being when the box is opened and it is observed. The act of observing it alters and maybe even fucks that cat up. We observers have limited what the cat can be. We might have even killed it.

Similar to the cat that’s both alive and dead at the same time, Matt Mullenweg (like all of us) is a complex person with more than one state, and with more than one personality at the same time as well. He is many different things to many different people, all at the same time: to his mother he’s a beloved son, to his child he’s a hero, and to his employees he could be a role model or a tyrant (or both). I could have framed my story about Automattic differently, and I could have drawn different conclusions about who Mullenweg is. And who’s to say either version was correct or incorrect?

Like Shcrödinger’s Cat, once I defined Mullenweg and put him in a box, and especially once I put it all down in writing, Mullenweg essentially became what I had written, to me and to readers of my blog which is the same thing as saying “in reality.” I removed Mullenweg’s ability to be anything other than what I wrote that he was. By “observing” the state of being that made my story work, I removed all the other potential states of being that could alternatively define him.

We writers may not kill Schrödiner’s cat, but we do something similar to the subjects of our stories. That’s what it means to put someone into a box. When you make someone fit your narrative by assigning them a role, whether it’s hero, villain, or something else, you destroy their ability to be anything else. You destroy the alternative versions of them that existed prior to your observation.

That’s how I believe quantum mechanics might apply to you and me in the real world in a practical way. It’s not just a theoretical thought experiment, it’s an observable daily occurrence.

Mullenweg will probably never be aware this story exists. But if he does learn of it and reads it, he might like to know that I’ve once again defined him, his state inside the box, and his story arc. He’s still the hero, a fallen hero perhaps, but one with the potential to change. Because his is a redemption story, in the end. All of our stories are, I think. We just have to choose to see it, and recognize that when we do, we haven’t truly eliminated all the other stories that define that person.

FREE MATT.