Tag: Attention

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Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 391 and Breath

Daily overstimulation is starting to rub the pressure sores of America’s downer induced depression into a full blown mental health crisis. Like, even more than usual. War with Russia in the imagination, inflation and market volatility coaxing a recession, culture war skirmishes over every basic fact in the pandemic, along with generalized anxiety are fucking us up focus wise. And every propaganda outlet and publicist on the planet is having a field day.

I’m listing to The Prodigy’s Breath and mumbling lyrics like pyschosomatic insane. So I guess, come play my game?

I try not to listen too much music as it overstimulates my nervous system to be honest so its kind of rare for me to have Spotify playing. I’ve got a finely tuned propaganda radar that benefits from sensing subtle shifts in tone and extremely online discourse. I can’t do that if I’m too worked up from the rough stimulus that comes from pop music. I mostly use it to run my portfolio and investing but sometimes I think I should really be used in the service of some autocrat or multi-national. I’m the doubt factory

I guess it is nice I can make a buck during the end of the empire. I’m one of those post structuralism, post-capitalism babies. A regular Bane “born to the darkness” of hyper objects like markets and climate change. So I guess I’d better be molded to being the kind of villain that survives a world of agitprop and meme warfare. Thanks Adbusters!

Frankly I’m having a fucking blast. Sure I’m scared I don’t have my homestead property all shored up for civilization hiccups, but I’m of the mind that the crumbles is going to take a while so might as well enjoy the gains that come from a massive upheaval. I guess its true venture capitalists are ghouls. I mean at least we aren’t private equity carrion birds but it is wild that the system rewards a class of people that invest in creative destruction.

But even as I want to paint myself as bad, I do stereotypically think what venture capital does is often good. We can’t predict second order effects. Chaos theory doesn’t let us see all the future paths. But stochastic as shit power laws are just math so we’ve got a shot at accidentally making things better. So while the agitprop tries to sway your opinions might I recommend you just Breath? That is my professional advice.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 386 and Pressure

I have been feeling a little disconnected the past couple days. The rising feeling that the zeitgeist isn’t coalescing around a shared narrative has been unsettling.

I usually feel a strong sense of narrative. Maybe because I’m a veteran of the internet’s propaganda class. I was a mercenary in the marketing and media space for the formative years of the social web. If anyone has natural immunity to disinformation it’s the people who manufacture it for a living.

But I can’t tease out who is placing what stories right now. I can’t even get a read on what stories are common knowledge right now. It’s like nothing is winning. There is no story capturing all our imagination at the moment. At least nothing beyond West Elm Caleb. We can agree that Tik Tok is toxic but we aren’t sure where the pandemic is headed, what politics will prevails, or where the markets are headed.

You’ve got to be careful in a toxic information climate like this. You can easily get suckered into attention holes. The more we fixate on the story of the moment the more anxiety you will feel. The zeitgeist isn’t legible. The only way you can protect yourself is to anchor what you know in core beliefs. Don’t let any one stop dictate your mood or shift your focus. Center yourself and you will be less affected.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 384 and Power Save Mode

I was convinced today was Thursday. I sent an email to my doctor confirming the appointment I was sure I had. She sent back a confused but it’s Wednesday response. That’s how I knew I went into power save mode.

I do my best to carefully cultivate reserves of energy. I used to have an attitude of “don’t save any for the swim back” as now I know I need to balance expenditure and recovery. I’ve been stopping when my battery is partially drained. So I wasn’t entirely sure I had over done as it’s been a while since I overshot my energy. That’s progress for me.

Yesterday I missed the signs for a migraine coming on. I was focused on something else and found myself surprised when I was vomiting and needed the lights off. Today I was so drained I went to lay down for a minute and found myself taking a three hour nap. Even though I had a good night of sleep. I wasn’t in a sleep deficient.

I was just in power save mode. I’d gone below the reserves I’ve have so carefully cultivated for the last year. Knowing that I’ll keep working on my reserves. I’ve got big plans coming up and I need to be operating on full capacity. So that means respecting I need to recharge now.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 383 and Good at What I Am

Startups are a privilege. You meet people who are exceptional at what they do. Brilliant qualified people who are so capable you could spend your whole life working and only achieve 10% of their innate capacity by natural talent. But the real differentiator is never the talent. It’s the acceptance of who you are. You can’t just be good at what you do. You have to be good at being yourself.

Be good at what you do. Then be good at what you are. Startups require both.

I struggle with this and watch many others who struggle as well. I am brilliant at connecting and amplification but terrible at details and logistics. I used to hate this about myself. I’d beat myself up when I’d get performance reviews that said I wasn’t detail oriented. I thought it was a moral failing. But guess what? It’s just a regular failing. I doubt I’d be great at my actual natural talents if I also had to be good at my failures. Accepting your light means accepting what cast shadows equally.

It’s hard to do. Our coping mechanisms praise us for our good traits and claim full responsibility for achieving them on our own merits. Equally we disown and assume divine intervention or forces outside our control drive our vices. We cannot be responsible for our failures. We only like to take responsibility for our wins.

And I get it. Accepting your shadows is hard. Our parents and our social circles show us who we are supposed to be. Show us what to strive for in the good life. If we are loud we are told to shush. If we are shy we are urged to socialize. Acceptance oh who we are isn’t encouraged. And for good reason. We must push to grow. To become an adult requires effort and work. But we must always remember the ultimate goal in becoming an adult is to become who you are. If you never accept yourself you will never be truly great. And the road is long so start getting good at being who you are.

Categories
Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 362 and Round Ups

I’ve only got three more days before I can officially say I’ve written something every single day for a year. I had it in my head I would go through everything I’ve written and tease out some themes. Maybe I could find a few sections and label “best of” posts. But I haven’t done it yet.

Partially I’m too lazy. Digging through tags and trying to make something coherent out of an exercise that has always been about being in the member seems like a stretch. I’m sure there are probably analytics I could look at but I’ve actually only ever glanced at what posts get read and who shares the content. One of the reasons I’ve loved this space is simply because I’ve done so little to cater to anyone but myself. It’s a journal that’s public but with little actual public input.

I know that sounds a little crazy. Clearly I’ve got to be writing this for someone or else why wouldn’t it be in a private journal? I’ve never had a good answer to that. I feel accountable to some kind of existential audience. That by commuting to hit publish every day I’ve promised some “other” I will abide by my commitment. But it never extended beyond the daily discipline of actually doing the writing. I need an outside world to feel the pull of obligation but I’d rather not go further than that. That somehow invokes readers & optimization or god forbid fans.

So I’ve yet to find the roundup post topic that feels like me. But I also feel like I might owe myself some kind of synthesis. Some learning or insight that comes from having engaged consistently and steadily in an endeavor. But it’s on my mind.

Categories
Finance Internet Culture

Day 359 and SOS

A few days ago I wondered what project or cultural artifact was going to grab our mutual cultural attention during the Christmas vacation week? Something always does. One year it was fucking Quora if you can believe it. This year I’m ready to call it for $SOS at least if you are into Web3 and crypto economics.

On fucking Christmas Day these degenerates drop a contract to let anyone claim tokens who has ever purchased an NFT on the OpenSea marketplace. And people went ape shit. Suddenly someone had taken all the visible contributions from OpenSea and manifested them in a token and said this is ours. Fuck corporate dominance of profit your users hold the real value. I’ve never seen anything so ballsy. Last year when Wall Street Bets decided to taken on hedge funds I felt like we had entered a new era of community behavior.

An emergent community has swum up from the sea and eaten the lunch of a supposedly greedy centralized platform. Web3 just attacked what we didn’t even realize was Web2. A crypto darling turned parable for centralization in the space of a few years. $SOS seemed to say community owned this value all along. The airdrop showed us the balance of power in a web3 community if we all work together. I’m so impressed by the sheer cultural force of the statement. It could all go horribly awry but god damn if it isn’t utopian.

I’ve got not fucking clue if this is a legitimate contract or not. I’m not going to FUD. But from a first principles, we are building a new internet where the incentives of the users align with the technology statement, then this is quite a shot across the bow. Also I’m pretty sure this makes it harder for OpenSea to IPO if their user base is in open rebellion against who gets rewarded.

The thing is I believe Devin to be a well meaning and genuinely forward thinking guy. He’s a terrific communicator that set out with the utopian intentions that we all do. But we are moving so fast with breaking cultural norms and acceptable societal level rewards for contributions to an economy that I think we might have just spiraled up to some kind of cultural singularity. Crypto might just be moving that fast. Whatever happens this is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen from a startup. Score one for the anonymous degens.

Categories
Medical Preparedness

Day 354 and Covid

The worst has happened. After nearly two years of being ambiently aware of Covid as a risk in the world I have tested positive. I honestly didn’t think I had it. I feel a little bit sick. I briefly ran a fever. I mostly felt the malaise from the inflammation. Little did I know that the game had changed with Omicron. That was all Covid.

I think we are in the middle of public communication crisis. The new symptoms for Covid are not severe coughing but the sniffles. And the vaccine doesn’t give you neutralizing immunity. It sure does help reduce the severity of the infection if the mildness of my symptoms are any indication. I worked several days before I realized the extent of the illness. And in no way had we reduced our daily caution. The only time I spent indoors with other people was when I had to go to urgent care for a torn ligament in my ankle.

I’ve got to be honest. This is going to happen to you. It’s happening fast and you probably didn’t see it coming. From when Omicron first got identified to me getting ill was less than two weeks. We have a rapid test shortage which means only those with flexibility and money will know if they are sick.

It’s going to be a very ugly month. Not because anyone is going to get extremely sick. But rather a lot of us are going to be a little bit sick. Let’s be gentle with each other when it happens. We are all going to be really miserable together.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 324 and Seneca

I was once asked by someone how I can act so quickly on major life decisions when they needed to mull a change over for months. I found the question confusing as I don’t think of myself as being particularly fast or even impulsive.

Well, that’s a lie, I’m impulsive about lots of shit but never anything of consequences. When it’s a major life decision I gather information for years so if the opportunity presents itself I’m prepared to act immediately. I take the bias towards action seriously.

But I only make a move when I believe I’ve crossed a threshold of information where the benefits of action clearly outweigh the benefits of inaction. I’ll make a move when I think I’ve got a better chance of winning than losing. Or when it’s clear that if I don’t act at all I’ll have a losing hand. But I generally only needs the odds to be tilted to a plurality of probability. Especially if it’s an action I can undo later. It’s not always easy to know if you can win. Sometimes the best you can do is recognize that inaction is weakening your position.

Part of my comfort in my process for taking action is I am a researcher by nature. If I’m interested in a topic I’ll begin with exposure right away. I’ll do the light skimming research the internet has enabled through articles and videos. I’ll dive deeper and purchase books. I’ll find experts in the field and begin following them. If I have questions I’ve got a habit of emailing the source. And then I’ll start doing what I can to implement my research with small scale experiments.

Chances are if you see me making a major move it’s because I’ve been considering the possibility of action for years. I like to be prepared to act immediately if an opportunity presents itself. If a situation presents itself I want to be ready. That way I’m positioned for luck. Seneca had it right. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. But you can only have luck if you are willing to do the work of preparing and be ready to take action if opportunities present themselves.

Categories
Chronicle Internet Culture Startups

Day 321 and Distracted

I was so excited for today. For the first day in weeks I didn’t have a single appointment on my calendar. I had finally run the gauntlet of bullshit obligations that has been chopping up my focus and my days.

I went to bed last night sure that’s I’d finally send out all the emails to folks I wanted as limited partners in my fund, follow up with a bunch of founders, and organize all the various materials and research just waiting to be published. I was going to make progress! I was going to pull the future forward with my own willpower.

But what did I do instead today? I sat in on DAO governance calls in Discord. I accepted an invite to a new working group for a stateless crypto project that is being rebooted for its second round. I listened to token and ecosystem rooms on Twitter for projects I’m invested in. I watched some bitcoin maxis fight against some side chain projects. And I read a bunch of newsletters and financial papers. Which all sounds productive but is basically me just fucking off.

The future arrives whether I pull it in on my force or will or not. Distraction probably has no meaning. But I did finally find a house in Colorado that I could see myself buying. So the only appointment on the calendar tomorrow is visiting the property. So perhaps that’s as much progress as was necessary.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 314 and Circadian Psych

I’ve been off since Daylight Savings on Sunday and I’m a little grumpy about it. All of my sleep metrics have been down by about 15%, which you wouldn’t think would make a dent in your day but somehow absolutely does. I’ve always been a winter person so I tell myself I don’t mind that it’s getting dark at 5pm but the adjustment is always brutal. Clearly my body minds.

I figure this will all pass in a few days but I resent the feeling of having my body not quite understand the rhythms of the day. It’s like having mild jet lag for no discernible reason. It messes with everything. The sun sets and I think oh it must be dinner time. Except it’s only 5pm and I just ate lunch a few hours ago.

It’s been combined with a few other changes in my routine which has probably compounded the issue. I tell myself I shouldn’t let it get to me. I keep trying to slide myself back to proper regimens. I am getting up at the same time even though it’s an hour earlier. I’m going to bed at the same time. And I’m sure it will pass. But god damn am I in a fucking foul mood. Your body really does keep the score.