Let me start by asking a question. Have you seen the best TV show ever?

10 years ago to this day (okay, 10 years and two weeks ago) Halt and Catch Fire premiered on AMC. Initially set up as a show about five people building a computer in the 80s, Halt delivered its first of many bait-and-switches midway through its first season to become a show about realizing you can do anything. As the months and years sped ahead, these five people developed a symbiotic relationship: the drive to create consumed their whole life, because creation was the only way they could express themselves. New companies and new ideas rose and fell, but even when Donna, Joe, Cameron, Gordon, and Bos hated each other, they couldn’t quit each other: creation was the only way they could live.

Halt is structured as a series of loops, that grow wider as they speed faster, but always end up back in the same place. It always asks the question “knowing what we know now, can we restart?” They take what they learned the last time, hoping that it won’t ruin them the next time, again and again and again. I recently graduated college. Seven years ago, to this week, I started posting on The Avocado. Life is not a loop. It’s a leap into the unknown every day, and I can’t restart it. Would I make the same choices if I got to go back? Would I do better?

Computers are the thing that gets them to the thing: they are the structure, the framework, the artifice to get them to the moments of self-expression, of human connection that they need in order to not destruct. Creation gives them a feeling that they can’t replicate anywhere else, and can barely even explain: there’s something like that for you, too. In honor of Halt, take a moment this evening to think about the thing that gets you to the thing. What do you do? Why do you do it? Now that you’ve done that, think about the way you can spread this thing in your life. What can you do for, and with, others to make them feel the way you do at your best? Now go do it.

Halt and Catch Fire is my favorite TV show. All four seasons are streaming on AMC+.