I got my ass kicked yesterday. I made a decision that I knew would be disliked. I knew how unpopular the decision would make and that I would have to suffer the consequences. I did not bend on my decision despite knowing how much I would suffer for it. It was right for me. But damn it always sucks to take a beating.
I have taken my college cafeteria’s name as a law of the universe. TANSTAAFL. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. I know it’s a bit unfashionable to be a Hayek libertarian these days but I do think we have to accommodate some basic physics in life. Actions have reactions.
I had to take my beating. I made people hurt. And it’s entirely possible that we have different expectations and realities. As soon as I give my firm position on my reality and energy I can expect a response.
I think it’s genuinely healthy to feel like you have the capacity to endure criticism. Sometimes you can’t make people happy. Sometimes you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes it’s just that you couldn’t find an accommodation between what you gave the situation and what it gave you.
Life has a budget. There is a balance to the energy of the world. I suppose sometimes you just have to take your licks.
I am about to sunset a long-standing weekly appointment that has been on my calendar for literally years. And I was surprised to discover how much getting back that time made me happy.
The block on my calendar was for something I very much loved doing and valued highly, so the sheer joy was unexpected. But as it turns out I loathe having a consistent obligation on my time.
This isn’t to say that I don’t like being responsible, reliable, or on time. But rather I like knowing if something comes up that I have some flexibility. And I don’t like to disappoint people by needing flexibility.
My suspicion is that this represents some lingering guilt I have about having a chronic disease. While I rationally know that I did nothing to deserve being sick, I do carry a self limiting belief that being sick is a weakness.
I’ve always prided myself on being a “mind over matter” person. I’ve shown up to countless events, meetings, pitches, and other obligations while in pain. I’ve been known to repeat “Michael Jordan, Game 5” as a mantra to remind myself that I can perform in even the worst physical circumstance.
Michael Jordan famously played and won with the flu. And the logic in my mind was surely I can do the same when something is on the line. So I always have. If someone expects me to show up and perform I do it even if I am struggling.
But as my season of no has begun I think it’s time I stop romanticizing my capacity to work when sick. I love having my time back on my calendar and I love the flexibility that I have to work whenever and wherever I want.
Maybe some people would chose to work less under these conditions. For me though, having more flexibility in when I show up means I’ll find even more time to put into my work. Because I love showing up for me. And sometimes it’s easier for me to show up when it’s not a damn calendar block.
I was very kindly tagged in a Twitter thread today with a lovely compliment about my daily writing habits. Does quantity have its own quality? As I close in on a thousand posts I think my answer is a strong “maybe!”
What are your favorite examples of “Quantity has a quality all its own?” Examples: @tylercowen writing a post a day, a column a month and a book a year for two decades Kanye’s “5 beats a day for 3 summers” Seinfeld’s “Don’t break the chain” one joke a day. Reply from Alan Simon @ almostmedia She’s not for everyone, but she’s been very dedicated and is approaching her 1,000th daily post.
One aspect of creation that is perhaps a bit understudied is just how much it is dominated by the truly prolific. The outliers practice a lot. Every single day I practice because I both enjoy it and I trust that doing a thing over time improves the thing. You can imagine how this predisposition makes me sympathetic to Calvinism.
I credit hippie parenting and the Waldorf curriculum. I was taught early on that it was good to make things even if you sucked at it. So I just spent a lot of my time sucking at creative endeavors and not finding it all that discouraging as I don’t mind being embarrassed.
So I suppose my quantity has demonstrated its own quality in its sheer persistence. Reminding yourself to do a daily practice has its benefits over time if you can stand it. Personally for me writing has always has a kind of blind optimism that has never been beaten out of me. I am a writer. I write. If it every becomes more than that I wouldn’t mind but I don’t need it to. The thing has been it’s own reward.
It’s such a challenge to keep up with reality. Modern conditions have well overmatched human biology.
I’ve tried to keep my own physical biology from being overruled by competing inputs and attention competitions but it’s a losing battle. Sometimes the best you can do is ride the wave and be sure you know when to get up on your board.
I have a little bit of a backlog of inputs to work through. I should probably use the next few summer weeks to pull back and push through it. I’ve got a lot of sense making to do. A lot of inputs to be distilled.
I’ll do what I can to put things up as I see them and have a thought but I’m feeling the need to be a little more guarded. Can’t be out in world and accessible all the time.
I myself am going through an exercise of ruthless prioritization of my own focus and find. As in any portfolio, write downs are inevitable. It’s easier to write something down when it’s money. Investments of time, energy, social capital and presence are much harder to let go. A sunk cost never boils? A watched pot never catalyzes? Sometimes a group or a movement chooses to remain outside their power.
I have so much less capacity to be present than I’d like. Others may prefer to be distant and still shower up but I find I’m happier with boundaries that are firm and great remove. That means when I do show up you have my full and intimate attention. It’s only right.
As more of us rise up the acceleration curve of artificial intelligence and must maintain our capacity to sense-make, this will help your mind and body function in a chaotic world.
I myself have taken Jonny’s Bootcamp, intend to be in the next cohort (my code JULIE gets you a discount), and I’ll be sponsoring a founder to attend the September cohort so consider this a chance to see if these tools are right for you. My revealed preferences tell you what you need to know.
Remember when safe spaces burst into a whole discourse thing? Maybe it was when the timelines got crazy around Harambe. I couldn’t pinpoint it but somehow “feelings aren’t facts” turned into a slur instead of commonly agreed upon consensus reality.
And now everyone is slinging insults to land points instead of finding a way to incorporate the duality of feelings and facts into civil society. Some trickster Demi-god is probably very pleased with his work. Maybe a goat or a Loki type.
There are many spaces that can feel unsafe depending on the context and the person. If I am aware that one of my choices provokes a strong response in another person, I may lay it aside for a minute so we can find common ground on choices and values we do share.
My sense of self is strong enough that I don’t have to hold every piece of myself tightly. I can empathize with someone I disagree with and find my way back to myself. Backbones and core beliefs are important.
I am finding myself in a number of situations right now where I wonder if I am too accommodating. My desire to empathize must meet the hard reality that is some people don’t feel safe empathizing with me.
Some of my reactions and feelings recently have left me feeling a bit abandoned and alienated. I am grieving for a lost matriarch in my family. And my grief manifested as a focused gratitude for finally seeing that I could live her lessons on my own every single day. And I have been living more joyfully because of it.
My reaction hasn’t been considered appropriate in some corners. I didn’t feel safe expressing my gratitude and focus and the happiness it brought me to have her thoughts in my head every day. And I realized then that not everyone will be able to feel safe with all your choices and decisions and emotions. Not every space can be safe for everyone.
The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. I’m proud to be an American. I am a patriot. I genuinely believe in the aspirational ideals of the United States of America.
I’m fully aware of the many millions of ways in which we’ve not lived up to founding ideals across the centuries. But I’ll be damned if I let the worst of us take away the aspirational ideals for the rest of us. The freedom to live up to our higher selves rests in each one of us. And fuck anyone who tells you otherwise.
I like to watch Roland Emmerich’s classic disaster porn cinematic masterpiece Independence Day every July 4th. The speech Bill Pullman delivers as humanity unites to fight the invading hordes of alien locusts is as inspiring a bit of cinema as I can imagine.
In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. “Mankind.” That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can’t be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it’s fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom… Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution… but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: “We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!
Now we don’t seem to be any nearer to humanity uniting behind an American plan for much of anything but I think to think one day we Americans might contribute to something as grandly aspirational as uniting our species. We can barely unite fifty states but we’ve not given up yet. And I personally intend to be here to keep fighting for our ideals. Happy 4th of July.
If you have spent time on this blog, you likely have some familiarity with my usage of crude language to get across a wider point. Sometimes being rude or lewd is simply the most effective manner of communicating a difficult truth.
While I have an overused forced metaphor tag given for my tendency to write in overwrought imagery, I’ve only just realized that I have written a trilogy of crude metaphors in service of explaining power as simply as possible. Those crude metaphors include shitposting, dickriding and now unsucked dick.
Without attention-grabbing taboo cursing, these topics can otherwise might seem too complex or academic. If you have read critical theory texts you know what I mean.
Overly formal language is alienating and tends to entrench us in our priors. With that context out of the way, I shall now get into today’s crude metaphor.
An unsucked dick is someone who is willfully giving up their own power to victimhood through refusing to act for what they want. And everyone wants their dick sucked. Metaphorically, at least a little. Those that don’t want power are usually loathe to admit it.
This turn of phrase is NOT intended to be gendered. Unlicked cunt doesn’t work as well for a host of sociopolitical reasons on sexual status and power. Don’t get too worked up about it. See the bigger truth.
You will find unsucked dick when the hard work of getting what someone wants is either is too much effort on their own, or otherwise requiring collective action & leadership on behalf of a group that is in disfavor from those currently in power.
Let me illustrate with a shitpost. Perhaps you too have had to organize a group of activists who would rather squabble and in-fight than win power.
My ambitions are bigger than running the internal politics of dozens of tiny activist groups that can’t see beyond their own unsucked dicks but this isn’t very polite to say.
A dick that is unsucked is the inversion of the dick that is ridden. You may recall that dickriding occurs when a group surrounds it’s most powerful member with praise and flattery. The leader has the sucked dick.
You can use tactics like shitposting to attract some of a groups’ energy away from the ridden dick. Shitposting is deliberate act of soliciting a response online. It’s traditionally used as a lower energy way to shape engagement and conversation away from the traditional or current power holders, particularly when you know no other method will break through the noise and narrative.
The collective action problem in the many disenfranchised groups in modern society can often be boiled down to unsucked dicks desperately shitposting as dickriders. They want power but either cannot or will not find ways to gain it.
I don’t strive to organize unsucked dick into powerful constituencies and I’d bet you don’t either. It’s exhausting to control others. Politicians and celebrities have their simps but it’s often a complicated and unstable relationship. Audience capture by your simps tends to turn you into the New York Times or Andrew Tate.
Everyone needs to be responsible for their own dicks (gender neutral I swear) and get on with achieving their bigger goals. If you are not actively getting beyond purity politics and activist in-group fighting you are not serious about winning the thing you claim to want.
If having is evidence of wanting a lot of you simply do not want power. And that’s OK, if that’s actually what you want. Just be damn sure your actions are true to want you want. And if you want something go fucking get it. I’m happy to help.
You can feel it. I know you can. The chessboard is being reset. Pieces are being moved. Gambits are unfolding. Absolutely everyone you know is going a little bit nuts.
I would not be surprised if these small informational disruptions will be recognized as part of a global conflict in a hundred years. I hope my heirs recognize that their mother fought as an information resistance fighters in The Great Dislocation Wars. Or World War 3. Just spitballing.
It’s humorous to me to talk in such a grandiose fashion because the reality on the ground is much of life is just a little bit harder and a little bit worse. But we still presume the world is basically still abiding by the same rules as yesterday.
I often forget how much people don’t want to hold power. The current moment shows a strange ambivalence about wielding anything yourself. Anyone with power is bad right? Well, it’s nuanced.
I want to assure you that your instincts in this matter is largely correct. You should distrust anyone that wants power. Be skeptical of the impulse.
Because being in charge sucks. It’s a shitty job. Anyone who has wielded any power from parenting a toddler to being a CEO probably intuitively knows this.
But once you have been given any legitimate form of authority, choosing to ignore that you wield power is a dereliction of duty.
The trouble with all reactionaries is that they assume once they take over, that their experience of power will somehow be different from the current horrors in charge. If they had bothered to crack open their minds while reading Shakespeare (or Thucydides or the Artashastra or literally any Great Book) they would know all men are subjected to the laws of power.
We lie to ourselves about how power functions because it’s very energetically easy to hand over your power to someone else. To be aggrieved is to have power over those you hold in contempt for exercising their power over you. Don’t be tempted by this trap no matter how righteous your cause.
Once you have picked up the mantle of power you must see through. If your people have given you authority you must see it through or hand it off to someone who will.
It’s very hard to own power. You most likely will not enjoy it. And you will be tempted to shunt off your agency. Just remember that you never carry power alone. It is always in concert with those who have consented to give it to you. Good luck on the great chessboard of life.
It’s nice to have another milestone day on my journey to write every single day. One hundred more days of writing till the big milestone that seemed unreachable when I began.
I have so much constancy to be proud of as I look at the body of work I created. I gave myself permission to let myself show up every single day and just start doing shit.
It wasn’t always good. I have up and down days of quality, quantity and even basic legibility. But because I have let myself be free I came with a week of bangers.
I am trying to let a lot go at the moment. Family is sick. A few are so ill we fear for their imminent loss. The world is shifting and the sense of change and acceleration towards something is palpable.
So many of us are fearful. But what else can we do but let it go? Wasn’t that the point of Disney’s mash hit? It’s a relatable multi-billion dollar franchise because it’s reflecting the human condition.
There is so little I have control over in my life. But I also have so much agency. If I chose to accept my life, and the choices it offers, I have so many possibilities
The present is here with us with all its many demands. Don’t borrow trouble from the future. Live your life prepared to let go of what you cannot change with as much responsibility and agency as you can for what is up to you.
