I Can't Name My Newsletter (The Curse of Being a Polymath)
Published: June 15, 2026 - 6 min read
I don't like dogs. So I have no good explanation for why a golden brown dog locked eyes with me at a bus stop and nearly made me miss my bus. When people ask me, "Prisca, do you like dogs?" I tell them, "Yeah, I like them from a distance." That's my very Nigerian way of saying no, not really.
Now I am well aware that I just became a villain in the eyes of a number of people reading this. But for context, I grew up in a Nigerian home where dogs were used for security. So when I hear a barking dog, that means danger, not a call to embrace.
The Dog at the Bus Stop
Yet one day, standing at the bus stop on one beautiful sunny afternoon, a couple walked by with their big, beautiful golden brown dog. I smiled at them and glanced at their dog. And when I locked eyes with this dog, something out of this world happened.
I couldn't pull my gaze away from him. I kept staring at him. He kept staring back at me. The couple had walked past, but he kept turning around and slowing them down just to look at me. And so did I. I almost missed my bus because I could not pull my gaze away from his beautiful, kind eyes.
We often hear theories about the possibilities of having lived past lives. The only way I can properly describe the depth of magnetic pull I felt while gazing at that dog is that if there was a past life, that dog and I, we were definitely a couple. We may have both been dogs, or we may have both been humans. Or, hell, we may have been cockroaches or worms. But we were definitely lovers.
I did not choose to fall in love with that dog, and I can't say for sure that it chose me.
But I promise you that the moment of falling was not gradual. It was a lock. Eyes locked on the dog, then something I always fail to describe with words happened. And I walked away changed.
This pattern I just described? It repeated itself last year.
Writing Was Not Supposed to Be Lovable
Back in high school, I was the math girl. I loved Mathematics so much that every afternoon, when most people were asleep, I taught it to my friends and younger students who struggled with it. Mathematics was my GPA booster, can you believe that? It was a core part of my identity. It was my thing.
English, on the other hand? I hated it. Not the language itself, but as a school subject. Especially writing. Writing essays, oh my god, I detested it.
Writing was not supposed to be lovable.
Yet many years later, when I couldn't find a job after sending hundreds of applications, I committed to 50 days of building public proof of work. (You can read the full outline of that 50-day sprint here.) And somewhere in those 50 days, I wrote the raw draft of a story about the time I took on a mission to start the next Khan Academy at 16 years old. I had graduated, and my afternoons were no longer dedicated to teaching math, so naturally, I felt empty. It felt like something was missing. So I decided to teach math on YouTube.
I remember writing that blog post, then polishing it, and then publishing it.
Then I read it. And re-read it. And re-read it again.
I could not pull myself away from this piece of art constructed so beautifully with letters.
Once again, I felt that pull. The same pull I felt when I could not pull my gaze away from that golden brown dog, my once-upon-a-time lover.
Can You See the Thread?
Can you see the thread connecting both stories? Cultural conditioning or personal conditioning may say: this is not for you. And then the thing shows up and claims you anyway. I did not choose it. It chose me. And the moment of falling was not gradual. It was a lock.
Eyes locked with the dog. Eyes locked on the blog post. Then my identity was forever redefined by an encounter I did not plan for.
My experience with writing that blog post showed me that I needed to write more. And I did.
I talk a lot about the fact that I have written over 160 blog posts in about 8 months, and on first glance, you may think it's all technical. But am I simply technical?
Yes, I have a Computer Science degree.
Yes, I love Mathematics and Economics.
Yes, I lose track of time when building and directing my AI agents.
But I also tell stories and get accused of being a poet. I wake up in the middle of the night with blog posts that demand to be put to paper before I can fall asleep again. They are not words I simply write. They demand to be written.
They have agency, and they haunt me.
The Newsletter I Couldn't Name
When I started writing, I only published on my personal website. After publishing well over a hundred blog posts, I decided to migrate all of them to Substack.
And for a long time, I kept thinking about what name to give the newsletter.
I ended up calling it Lead AI Agents, because after all, I am an AI Consultant building Custom AI Solutions for companies and people, while also running workshops to teach people how to solve their specific problems with AI. But truthfully, that name does not do justice to the beautiful chaos that lives in here.
I cannot name the newsletter because the newsletter, like me, refuses to be one thing. I am not a mathematician. I am not a poet. I am not an AI consultant. I am not a storyteller. I am all of it.
A single name cannot hold the mess. And for a polymath like me, that is the point.
The dog was not supposed to be lovable. Writing was not supposed to be lovable. Both found me anyway. Both claimed me without asking. Both redefined what I thought I knew about myself.
Welcome — you're in the right place
If you've read this far, you already understand what this newsletter is: a polymath refusing to pick a lane, out loud. The math, the poetry, the AI agents, the stories that wake me at 3 a.m. and demand to be written, they all exist here.
If that beautiful chaos is something you want landing in your inbox, hit the subscribe button now.
As always, thanks for reading!