Category: Emotional Work

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Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1192 and Stasis

I am not feeling well today and used all the capacity I had to simply push at the edges of my universe and scream a bit into the abyss.

Screaming into the abyss is my pet name for being on the internet. Mostly Twitter. I know it sounds stupid.

Sometimes there are actual people on there still which is a small comfort. Just telegraphing into the universe that you are a “live one” is half the battle of bringing the future into the present.

I know it sounds like a stupid way to bring in resources and deals and alliances but it works. Make of that what you will. I’ll get on a phone call now and again if you are really compelling and intelligent. I spent some time on the phone with one of my favorite people and it was more energy than I would have anticipated.

Sometimes that’s just how it goes. There is only so much you can do when your time horizons for results are measured in a ten year cycle anyway.

It’s occasionally embarrassing to admit there are days I don’t have the energy to manage what what I eat, how much I exercise, whether I bath or do farm chores or otherwise manage the work of physical reality.

A few days of the month I do the absolute minimum to manage stasis and I honestly even that was a stretch. But like the classic Monty Python sketch of another era “I’m not dead yet!”

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Emotional Work Homesteading Startups

Day 1191 and 90 Day Horizon

I feel like I’ve got a decent grip on the directions that have captivated markets and where the next decade of opportunities will emerge. My long term confidence on managing through chaos remains the same. Focus on resilience and adaptability.

I feel as if repeat myself constantly in the ways that I live this through my revealed preferences.

In more local “place” resilience we live on land we own land in Montana with our own well, water rights, and powering our energy needs off a large solar grid.

In broader macroeconomics terms, I invest in decentralized ecosystems like Bitcoin, open source software projects and compute exchanges. Hell, I was even the first check into a nuclear energy company last year. Energy and networks matter.

Yet I have no idea what I intend to do with my next couple of months or where I should even spend my time except “keep doing what you are already doing!”

I’ve come to some crossroads on my attention and the decisions I need to make in the short term feel challenging. I’ve never had more opportunities in front of me and it’s exhilarating. But I also don’t feel like it’s clear how to best allocate my attention in the very near short term.

But I also don’t have high confidence on what I should be cutting out or bringing to the forefront in the next 90 days or so. There is simply so much happening (and those effects are potentially existential) that it’s a struggle for me to say “fuck it we ball” to what’s in front of me. What ball? What am I saying fuck it to? Is it a fuck no or a fuck yes?

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Emotional Work

Day 1190 and Fantasy Family

“Do as I say not as I do”

The value of an involved family versus the value of an independent life are not being well reconciled for middle aged millennials and their aging Boomers parents. And it seems to be the source of much hurt.

The sadness of misaligned values

Fantasies of a good family life that the elder generations did not prioritize when parenting their own children are now cropping up everywhere in culture.

“Do what we want you to do not what we wanted to do”

Nowhere is this potent than on the topic of grandchildren. I’ve never had a a lowly reply go as viral as this one.

I understand how much it hurts to have family tell you they value something when they have acted completely contrary to that.

The biggest mismatch I’ve seen with my friends and their parents has been the hope that their parents would take grandparenting more seriously and being devastated when they simply don’t have any interest.

Now guilt & shame over past failures can be overwhelming as someone approaches the end of their time on this earth. Maybe the freedom at the end of life is more important than time with the next generation. Maybe those grandparents don’t want to be close to their grandchildren. Maybe they didn’t want closeness with their children in the first place. Or maybe some people only want relationships on their terms. I don’t know everyone’s personal values.

If a family didn’t live their values with their children when growing up then it’s hard to expect alignment on preferences that were never shown but only told.

I know it hurts to look at these issues in the face. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise millennials that not everyone in our parent’s generation wanted families and children. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise the elderly generation their values have to come with actions.

But coming to terms with failures in our own past is inevitable. And it’s wise to see them, own them and move on. I’ve now seen the values misalignments in every type of family. Married for 40 years, thrice divorced, mixed modern families, upper class, lower class, working class. All families have self deception on what they actually value versus what they say they value.

Families can claim something is important but don’t act like it. Acting like something is important makes all the difference. If you feel misalignment in your own relationships remember both parties have to change and find the relationship that they actually want.

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Emotional Work

1189 and The Expense of Choice

One of my most American traits is how much I prioritize making my own choices. I am not contrarian for its own sake, but I prefer to freely align myself with what I value. I don’t make a secret of my revealed preferences and I am not afraid to associate with people who have different values.

We’ve had a lot more freedom of choice introduced into our lives during the Great Dislocation. Past narratives around family and work are beginning to feel more options. Paul Millard’s Pathless Path took off as work from home introduced significantly more flexibility into professional life.

Internet take-have Matthew Yglesia’s framed the problem of too much freedom around work as a Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor situation. Having a job that structures your life is a benevolent authoritarianism that people aren’t brave enough to admit they prefer.

I think this is a kind of snobbery that elites like to pretend is subversive. I’ve met many types of people from all kinds of classes, backgrounds, and competencies who thrive with more agency.

I am being exposed more often to people now who struggle to self regulate and take responsibility for their life but mostly I spend time with competent people.

This isn’t to say that structure is unimportant nor that work doesn’t provide some of it. I personally value routines and rhythms in my personal life because I’ve chosen to do more independent work outside of larger organizations. My work has to be held on course by my choices.

I won’t say it’s easy as none of my day to day choices matters in the same way that making the big yearly calls right does. I know I have to take the time to invest in myself so I can make those calls. I don’t have a wider organization setting the direction of my life or my day. So the only benevolent authoritarian is myself.

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Emotional Work

Day 1188 and Existential Stability

I’d like you to consider that our current culture of safetyism is not trying to provide you with any actual safety but rather a pantomime of one. Security theater. And this is why we see whole generations of existentially insecure “adults” trapped looking for more signs of stability.

People aren’t really looking to be economically stable before they start families; they’re looking to be existentially stable.

Luke Burgis

Luke Burgis rightly reminds us that the only existential stability that exists is one in which you make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences.

Yes, sometimes consequences can be quite dire. No, you cannot put off making decisions until you have 100% certainty though I hear the restaurant at the end of the universe has a great drinks menu. Try the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Douglas Adams “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” the sequel to The Hitchhikers’s Guide to The Galaxy.
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Emotional Work

Day 1187 and No Joke

I don’t really care for April Fools. I can’t say I live in a time where I’m looking for additional cognitive overhead. And yet I am laughing all the time.

It feels a bit silly but sometimes I’ll just lose my shit laughing. Objectively funny things are happening as non-normalcy continues on. The Normie Restoration is upon us. And it’s just fucking funny.

If it feels impossible to pay attention as responsibilities mount then you already know you will cut back. Close the aperture. The return to living your own life. I’m sure they will enrage lots of people. Which is often the sign of a good joke.

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Emotional Work

Day 1182 and Unreal

Fairytales aren’t meant to inspire you. They are meant to make you afraid. But fairytales aren’t real.

So there is no need to fear, even when it seems like the scary stories of our childhoods may be becoming real.

Simply marching forward through is all it takes to move to the other side.

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Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1181 and Up All Night To Get Lucky

I’m in a new and odd pattern of activity recently. I maintain a flow like hyper awareness on my rotation of professional obligations with little sleep for two or three days. Then I break to sleep with as little movement or energy expenditure as I can manage for full day. It seems to be working for me.

I would prefer to call this approach “fits and spurts” or “the lion hunts when it’s hungry” but that sounds more like a behavioral problem than a protocol. Which, given the endemic narrative civil wars against empiricism in the N of 1 gym bros, seems about right aesthetically. Experimenting with your body is your right.

I have made many shitpoasts about this culture after yesterday New York Magazine “are we having unrealistic expectations about the same traumatized dude” essay. I don’t know anyone involved in that particular situation but I take lots of biohacking tips from broken people because I am also broken. Physician heal thyself. Biohacker hack thine own protocol and or behavioral problem.

So any distinction between a protocol and a behavioral problem is perhaps unnecessary except for optics. We can do a wash coating of public relations speak but it’s a virtue to seek to serve your gifts while carrying your sins. I personally advocate for a minimum viable approach to this but omnia vanitas

We do what we can to fix and accept parts of ourselves that we cannot live with and pray we find wisdom as we accept our own hypocrisy and failures. I hope that I do less harm to others and most especially less harm myself. I do not accept any type of coercion I didn’t choose myself. Neither should you. Don’t ride any dicks unless that’s what you like.

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Emotional Work

Day 1174 and Don’t Everybody All At Once

I have gone through a turbulent reentry into the timeline over the past week or so, and have been steadying into its depths. I’m sure you’ve noticed the pops, pings, hisses and howls of psychological re-pressurizing. We are now at a comfortable cruising altitude for Julie. You are free to roam about the psyche.

A lot of people have been asking me for things. It’s been in a way that is both jarring and seemingly unconnected while simultaneously hitting the apophenia like a thumber hits drumsand on Arrakis. Thump thump thump. Attention is drawn. It has rhythm. Walking without rhythm so as to not attract the worm doesn’t seem to be an option any longer. I recognize your footsteps old man.

I recognize your footsteps old man

Let me try again. Imagine a beautiful woman who may or may not be available is at home during a rainstorm. She’s on her phone but has no need to go out. Everyone who thinks they have a chance texts her. Too much trouble to go out and hunt in the rain but if you’ve got a number maybe. Then maybe you take the trouble. The woman she laughs or sighs depending on the overtures. Sometimes she even responds. Her motives may seem clear to you. The motivation of her suitors may similarly seem clear. Maybe you can even predict. And yet chaos still exists in the hearts of men and women.

I am closing my aperture just as many others are opening theirs back up. Many do not like they see. No matter how much advance warning you may give people about trouble on the horizon if they are trained to ignore they will. Until they can’t. And then in the rainstorm they communicate with the people they can reach. Beacons in the storm.

I myself am less troubled by the rain. It would seem that we are in a moment where any number of timelines have diverged completely. Many storms are raging. The sun shines elsewhere. We continue to have our dead.

We’ve put up fences to keep the sight out. We put up sand bags. But you can’t stop the smell from all the fires. Maybe you can’t outrun the rising tides. Maybe you are a civilization level smoker jumper going from one fire to the next. Maybe an actual one. Maybe there are no weather metaphors that can be tortured into a form that reaches across to you.

The beacons I am responding to, as per usual, are not the ones you’d expect. I wouldn’t be a very good node in the network if I were too programmable but neither can I be so unpredictable that “it” doesn’t reach out. It pings. It pings. It pings. It calls out. It reaches out.

Miller the Detective. It reaches out
Categories
Emotional Work Internet Culture

Day 1169 and Ides of March

I try to collate my thoughts most days but I can’t do it tonight. It’s the eve of the Ides of March and I’ve got something to dread just like Julius. I will be tweeting bangers into the abyss and praying.

I understand Kafka now in a way that I didn’t as a teenager. That is all. Go read some Juvenal instead of seeing Dune 2. Pray the the gods of chaos that my people be spared. Good luck to the Windsors but mostly because we shouldn’t do to Kate what we did to Camilla. Let the stupid aristocracy fans enjoy that anyone cares about Burke’s Peerage. The Nikkei opens in ten minutes.