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with full text! because I love you and your RSS reader! (feedbin is good and worth $5/month and I get my email newsletters there too; or feedly is ok and free)
smash that like and subscribe button, as I will plan to just post there from now on.
so I can't say it really moved yet, dang - I'll fix it soon.
I guess I'll clumsily cross post until then; this can't possibly go wrong
my post today:
ever have chunks of time that go by and you’re not really sure what all happened?
I keep a log file these days I call “dan log” at work and write down all the things that I did - not really sure why, besides sometimes it feels good to go back and find all the little things I did while I felt like I “didn’t accomplish anything.”
life is a little bit in that “going by in a blur” state right now. a friend mentioned once that sometimes he feels like he’s writing his story and then sometimes he’s living it. I like that framing1. Imagine that part of you is living life as another part of you is writing it, much like Gromit riding a train while laying down tracks. Right now I kind of feel like I’m getting ahead of the train tracks, or like the writer/tracklayer is on autopilot. It’s not pleasant, but it’s mostly bearable.
(the reason isn’t a mystery: I’m just working on a new project at work. it’s kind of big, it’s a lot of manageable tasks instead of one big unwieldy task, and it’s kind of important and deadliney. I’m not super used to those things, so I spend more time working and it’s stressful.)
Another thing that’s stressful: I got a new keyboard. I think I used to type about 100 wpm. This keyboard is split, columnar, tented, thumb clusters, and all kinds of things that are probably ergonomically good. But that means it’s a learning curve. I think I went down to about 40 wpm and that is so agonizingly slow, I feel like those dreams when you are running but you can’t run. I’m back to about 70 or so now, so that still feels bad but not quite so bad. Epistory was pretty fun; a little cheesy but still the best typing game I’ve played. Typeracer is still fun. typing.io is what I really need: practice with all the colons and brackets and arrow keys; those are still rusty.
One thing I’m learning in the process: a certain kind of feeling about a recurring engagement. Let’s call it “legit conflict extra-guilt.” The way it works is this:
person X invites me to event Y that is kind of an effort for me but I want to be the kind of person who goes to it.At this point, I’m feeling Legit Conflict Extra-Guilt. What will inevitably happen if I don’t address it is that I will feel guilty but keep having conflicts, one way or another, and I’ve got to cut my losses. It’s a certain kind of feeling that is both like “nah, I’ll totally make it next time, see, it was a legit conflict” but also “ooh I really don’t have time for this.” Now that I’ve learned this feeling, when it comes up I know that I must admit that I don’t really have time for it right now, I was too greedy in signing up, me grasp exceed grasp, and I’m sorry for that but I will generally not be at event Y.
It’s neat to start to recognize some of the dumb tricks my brain pulls on me!
I think I’m using it a slightly different way than he meant it. Maybe he reads this; if so, sorry! ↩︎
here's what I wrote a couple weeks ago:
happy month 12 of pandemic to you too
seriously, though: I’m re-forming my relationship to despair, slowly but surely. I think around 22-26 I was restless and bored; 27 was manic so the question didn’t come up, but 28-33 I’ve been more or less orbiting the attractor state of despair. 34, though, I’m out of that orbit! I’m careening all over emotional space. but some recent experiences have left me wondering what my relationship with despair is.
let me define a term. by “despair”, I’m probably not using the right word; the feeling I’m thinking of is more angry. it’s when you start feeling bad about X and respond by saying, well, who cares, X sucks anyway. it feels like a snotty punk rocker, or road rage, or maybe Walt towards the end of Breaking Bad. it’s feeling better never to have been1.
it’s a pretty coherent view of the world! and whenever I was feeling crummy, I could retreat into “well, the world sucks anyway.” problem is, it feels bad. and … maybe it’s not true? like, the world isn’t inherently bad to be in2.
so ok, I think that kind of despair is no longer my default attractor. that rules: it feels hopeful. it also feels like some responsibility: I can’t just say “this sucks and I didn’t ask to be born”; I have to make life worth living.
Sometimes that’s very hard! Sometimes I feel very run down and I’m not sure how this day can be part of a world that doesn’t suck. Or, how can I argue life is generally ok if right now I want to burn down everything in the world?
I don’t know, but my current hypothesis is: you can visit that despair planet and that’s fine and healthy, as long as you don’t get stuck in it. Take your time there, feel everything fully, and then when it’s all out, move on. If you don’t do that, then you’re restraining yourself from feeling feelings, and that rarely ends well.
not saying that author is despairing; maybe he only thinks, not feels, better never to have been. ↩︎
it’s not inherently good either, it’s just two wolves. ↩︎
somehow that's always stuck with me. what legends! it's like, it's not really a heartfelt prayer; but it's also not mocking the prayer; it's not like they particularly cared to pray, or had anything against it. it's walking that beautiful line between "laughing at" and "laughing with." so hats off to you, Joe and Rich and Dan. and of course, the Goff family.
At my job, performing in real time doesn't matter. I'm trying to build/do something, but it's slow and the product matters, not the performance. It's like being an author: John Grisham could be a shlubby awful incoherent dude in person, but as long as he cranks out the books, he gets paid. At the other end of the spectrum, for performers or athletes, each minute matters. We don't know what Mick Jagger or Michael Phelps do in their spare time usually, but they don't have to be creating something. They could sit around twiddling their thumbs for hours; as long as they are amazingly perfect for a few minutes, that's good enough.
Of course, performers and athletes don't twiddle their thumbs in their "off time", they practice. But they're practicing not so that they can "remember how to do something cool", they're practicing so that they are a certain person when they get on stage.
Been thinking about the gom jabbar test. (Lynch version) Isn't that the same thing? You've been training your whole life for this instant, to see if you can withstand the pain enough. There's not really any strategy you can think about to pass it, you just have to be the person who passes it.
Another way you could put this distinction is, "do you think about it cognitively, or just do it?" Like, I bet Stephen King thinks about how he's writing a lot, but I doubt LeBron is thinking much during a play. (Maybe there's some cogitating while setting up the play, but you've kinda got to just do it.) So, it's "does this thing live in System 1 or System 2", ok. But I think while talking about System 1/2 we get hung up on "how does my brain do the task", and sometimes thinking about it as "I'm becoming the person who ____" helps.
For example, confidence. Like when you're dating, say, and you're real nervous, and that's just not going to go well. But you can't really fake your way to "being confident"; you have to become the person who is confident. Likewise, a friend recently suggested, when you're presenting a big report, it may be important to have been very thorough and tracked down all the edge cases, not so that they can be in your presentation, but so that you are now confident about what you're saying.
(This line of thinking can go wrong a few ways: 1. "I just failed at X; must mean I'm just not a good enough person." 2. motivational speeches about transforming yourself or whatever. 3. being just a debate over minutia.)
this overview of how GAN artist Helena Sarin works
places to buy mp3s (besides Bandcamp, which rules but doesn't have everything, or Amazon, which is Bad)
This toot by Darius Kazemi - links to this book (which I haven't read) and these essays on flying cars and bullshit jobs (which I have read). I didn't recognize his name when he recently died, but he's indirectly had a decent-sized effect on me! Bullshit Jobs, especially, is such an important and well-written wake-up call. You can argue back (and indeed I do; mostly because it's easy to say a job is bullshit from the outside, and I think he's a little pessimistic about what percent of jobs are bullshit) but you probably can't shake the feeling that, at some level, he's probably right.
(Next question: what percent of Silicon Valley is bullshit? And how high up the ladder of abstraction do you have to go? Say your job is very effective at helping your company make money, but your company doesn't actually help anyone; can we still call all them bullshit?)
(y'know, how every coffee shop looks the same, every airbnb has the same ikea furniture, and every song on spotify sounds the same)
Ironic how my generation rages against AirSpace 1.0 (an Applebee's, Dave & Buster's, and Cheesecake Factory in every town, so you can travel around the US but still only eat colossal plates full of chicken parmesan) but then creates AirSpace 2.0. Further impetus for my future coffee shop to be more Fiery Furnaces/Midnight Gospel/Room of Requirement and less Apple/Everlane/Ritual Valencia.
Like Micromorts, but for your chance of catching covid, not dying. I think I'd be ok with a 1% chance of catching it over the next year - which is to say I can have 10k Microcovids, which means 200/week. This means flying in a plane is 1.5 weeks' worth of risk; my d&d group eats up half my risk for a week; etc. The d&d group could go down from 100 to 50 if we sit 6ft apart, or 30 if we mask! Hmm. This is getting closer to "actually helping me make decisions."
I heard some quote from him (maybe in this podcast ep?). A student asked him "how do you become a poet?" Rilke answered something like "if you can live your life otherwise, do so. If you absolutely have to, then be a poet." The more I see myself hitting mid 30s and not becoming a monk or Nat Geo photographer or Nobel winner, this is almost comforting. "Those people" are singularly driven (for some reason that's a combo of nature and nurture). Not to be judgmental - I'm not better than them for being not-pathologically-driven - but maybe for my own sanity I can start to put more achievements in the "NBA player" category: not gonna happen for me and that's ok.
This isn't new; "being ok with not winning a Nobel Prize" has been a theme for me ever since I realized that might not happen (college, I think?). But it's been coming up a little differently recently. Now I'm asking: do I care about being known in my field? (and what is my field?) Like, not even "respected professor" but maybe just "guy who gives conference talks or something." Do I even want that? If so, how do I get there? If not, how do I deal with the bad feelings that come up with accepting that?
this was a slow thread on twitter but I think it's worth unrolling into a blog.
I want the good guys win this election. (it's more clear than it's ever been; I'm not against conservatives, but the entire Republican party has shown itself to be spineless, fascist, and corrupt to the core.) However, I am super low on emotional energy (pretty low on all kinds of energy) these days. I have some money. I can donate that money. Fine. But how much and where to?
I have no idea. It feels kind of sane to pick a number and then disperse all that, instead of trying to evaluate each thing on a case by case basis. I picked about 1 paycheck's worth. I don't know if I should do more; it feels ok enough though.
Well, I could just give to Biden, say, and hope that the Biden org is the best at turning out voters. But I don't imagine they are, and I imagine they have plenty of money. I think that small races are better at turning out people, and then those people will just incidentally vote for Biden too. Plus, diversification of risk - if I give to 15 different races then it's not like all my money will be wasted, even if one race does badly for whatever reason.
Again, I think let's pick from a few people to diversify risk. If person A has some strategy to pick the best house races but they turn out to be wrong, I don't want all my money to go to waste.
So I came up with the following sources:
Preet Bharara's Housework 2020
Pinboard/Maciej Ceglowski's Great Slate and State Slate
Give Smart by the Future Now Fund and Data for Progress
And a couple one off things, I'm not perfect. When given a bunch of equally good seeming candidates (as in Housework) I erred on the side of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and North Carolina (swing states + personal connections), and I think Michigan and Arizona (swing states and a couple races going on).
