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# The Room I Built
- URL: https://writing.kevinvertrees.com/the-room-i-built/
- Published: 2026-10-09T10:53:43.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-09T10:53:43.000Z
- Description: Back in New York after the drive from New Orleans, I pulled out the laptop that held years of my music and wiped it clean. Worry sat in one corner, excitement in the other. I saw them both — and built anyway.
- Author: Kevin Vertrees

It was Monday, and the sun flashed off the Manhattan skyline. I was up early, finishing the drive north from New Orleans — soon I’d be travelling under the Hudson and over the East River, landing back into the neighborhood I’ve called home for more than thirty years.

The Big Apple is a very different city than the Big Easy.

New York wears its ambition out loud. Subways roaring underfoot, tourists shoulder to shoulder, ferries cutting the chop of the East River. Bridges strung between boroughs like someone dared them into the air. This place isn’t for the timid — it’s for people who push themselves and their ideas past what’s been proven. Every time I come back, I feel it: here, the unbuilt thing is already half-real.

For the past two days I had been speaking to AI on my phone, brainstorming my dreams and aspirations. This morning those thoughts turned into how to bring them to life.

As I unloaded the car and wheeled a dolly full of suitcases, boxes and belongings into the loft, a new plan was emerging. I set up my computer at my work desk, connecting wires and putting various pieces of music equipment back in place. Two keyboards, an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, and a ukulele bass are within arm’s reach of the music corner, and a bookcase filled with musical scores, software design manuals, spiritual texts and original music I’ve written over the years sits across the room.

And while unpacking, I realized what was missing: a construction zone.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/77/e1/77e1c87a-6492-4ff5-9cd8-832420503076/content/images/2026/10/Cut-Paper-City-of-Creative-Journeys-Table.png)

A folding table was pulled out of the hallway, landing between the job and music workspaces. Next came the old laptop I had brought back from New Orleans. At one time it was state of the art. It was now barely able to keep up with the latest software versions.

Now, if you’re like me, you get attached to things. For years, this laptop was where I created and wrote music. Late nights, weekends, melodies and memories — all were tied to this machine. I’m typically not one to wipe the slate clean; I look for ways to accept and streamline what’s already there. More of what Michelangelo did with a block of stone — seeing the final shape and removing the unnecessary bits and bobs to get to the essence of what’s needed.

I could have uninstalled the unneeded software and kept a familiar friend at hand.

Instead, I chose a very different path. To wipe the machine completely and start fresh. Consciously, with awareness that I was making the choice, present step by step as the process unfolded.

Back at Claude, I started a different conversation.

*“I have an old laptop that I’d like to repurpose for AI purposes. It is a Windows-based machine with an Intel processor, i7-6700HQ with a 2.6 GHz processor and 16 GB of RAM. I’d like to reformat this machine and repurpose it so that I can connect to it remotely and use it as a remote agent. Help me understand how I can go about this.”*

Claude thinks, and flashes *“Weighed OS compatibility, remote access options, and AI workload feasibility” -* then a formal response.

*“Good project to take on. Before I lay out a plan, let me verify a couple of things that are time-sensitive…”*

If you’ve read the previous posts, you know that I had started viewing AI tools as partners. I had given them the primary task of capturing my goals, my needs, my requirements and then helping me document and plan them. I’ve talked about technology, and I’ve talked about music and New Orleans and creativity.

What I’ve alluded to, but haven’t named, is my meditation practice. For years I’ve been sitting quietly each morning and evening. Watching my body, my feelings, my thoughts as they come and go. But this practice isn't for a few quiet minutes of alone time. It's so I can fully enter and engage with life itself. Meditation rides off the mat and way into the ordinary hours - the challenges, the disappointments, the decisions like this one. The ability to witness whatever rises in my experience without being ruled by it and to know that there are always choices available.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/77/e1/77e1c87a-6492-4ff5-9cd8-832420503076/content/images/2026/10/Textured-Paper-Sunrise-Meditation-Valley.png)

This AI conversation quickly turned toward installing an operating system I’d never used before. It recommended wiping away all of the information from the machine, saying goodbye to those old recordings and software that I wouldn’t be able to reproduce. I had backups (or thought I did), but worries and concerns and doubts sat firmly in one corner of that room. As did the excitement of building a dedicated machine on an operating system I’d never used before. Both corners wanted attention and pulled at me, but my practice has taught me to just witness them.

*“I see you,”* I said. Not to Claude **\-** but to myself, almost unnoticeably. Not ignoring these thoughts and the feelings they created in my body. Not pretending they didn’t exist or trying to push them aside. But acknowledging them as they occurred and letting them gently feed into the AI conversation with Claude.

Within an hour I had worked through all the questions and concerns and had a USB drive with the software I needed to install. The machine restarted and a prompt asked if I was sure I wanted to reformat. I was. The old recordings, the late nights, the familiar friend — gone in the time it takes to boot.

Now fast forward four months. Two machines sit by my music desk, tag-teaming the creation of a framework I first pictured on the drive up from New Orleans. I’m writing this post with it and I'm still talking, dreaming, and capturing these half-formed dreamy ideas that pop up. They get documented, built, and then the next idea comes up.

From the windows in my loft, I see the Brooklyn Bridge. Its designer, John Roebling, tested his idea for a suspension bridge in upstate New York, then staked everything on building it at a scale no one had proven. Or dared to dream. He could have built what was safe. He instead chose the unproven path and gave the city the [eighth wonder of the world](https://www.history.com/articles/brooklyn-bridge?ref=writing.kevinvertrees.com).

That’s the energy of New York. Of dreamers and creators who witness the doubt and choose to build anyway.

A wiped laptop on a folding table is not a bridge. But it’s the same nerve, scaled down to a desk: seeing the thing before it exists, clearing the ground to build it, seeing the fears and obstacles on the way and choosing to move through them.

*Next in the series: The thing I’m building (the KNote Operating System).*