Tag: Emotions

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Culture Politics

Day 1299 and If You Aren’t Outraged

Land grant university towns in the American west should be studied for all kinds of reasons. But right now I’d love an old fashioned long form magazine essay on Bumper Sticker culture.

The Subaru plastered in stickers was a fun punchline when I was a kid. You’d chuckle at slogans like “if you aren’t outraged you aren’t paying attention” because you agreed.

If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attentions

If only people were paying attention you’d smugly nod. I use the word smug because in 2006 South Park pointed out the problem with being too smug about having the right opinions is that it alienates people.

And now here we are in 2024 everyone is paying attention. And everyone is outraged. And it sucks. All of this paying attention making us outraged doesn’t seem improve the situation in the slightest.

And everyone is smug as hell being very assured that they have the right opinion even though we appear to have about thousand different ways to prove to yourself that your outrage is justified and it’s the other team isn’t paying attention.

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Emotional Work

Day 1298 and In My Bones

I got a great night’s sleep according to all trackers. I didn’t feel well when I woke at all despite this.

I had the kind of unsettled unwell feeling that you can’t pinpoint with any precision but you know in your bones something is off. Naturally this meant some shit was about to go down.

We’ve been enduring the summer of political news. The media, the chattering classes and “the opinion leaders” have perfected the art of breaking through even if you don’t pay much attention. And I do pay attention.

I wrote a long essay yesterday on the general state of living in the past’s vision of the future. It’s worth a read if you have an interest in Cyperpunk or anarcho-tyranny. I feel the weight of all the competing narratives fighting for my attention. And I am just tired.

Categories
Emotional Work Politics

Day 1294 and Like Shit

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that I’d been breaking down crying at regular intervals since the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

I’m not a Trump supporter. I am and will remain a small government libertarian and I can’t see that changing short of fundamental shifts in material reality. Which is possible but human nature doesn’t change much.

I feel like absolute shit physically and emotionally about where we are at. The rapid changes that are proceeding in the wake of this violence cannot be undone. We are here.

I feel incredibly stupid saying this which is almost always a sign I should say it.
I’ve been breaking down into tears every couple of hours since the assassination attempt on Trump.
My emotional metabolism isn’t up to the acceleration unless I let myself feel it a

We are in a chaotic time and even I do not feel up to the rate of change. I’m afraid of what will happen no matter the outcome of the election.

I don’t think we should underestimate the trauma of political violence. A fellow citizen died for exercising his fundamental rights. He’s not the first and unlikely to be the last.

I want to feel less impacted emotionally but I can’t just stuff these feelings. I wish I could write more and at length about all of this but I’m simply not there. It’s all too painful.

Categories
Chronic Disease

Day 1282 and Summertime Sadness

Montana has blessedly been free of excess heat and fire season doesn’t seem to have arrived. But it was a wet spring and I fear we have a long summer ahead of me. I live in one of the best possible places to spend a summer and I still find it challenging m.

I was looking back at pictures from this time last year and I was not in the best health. I’ve never been a summer person and I have to accept some aspect of its misery is likely to forever plague me.

Other people have season affect disorder in the winter. I guess my people are a winter people. I can’t wait for snow to return.

Maybe I’m not alone in finding summertime unbearable. Lana Del Ray croons through summer’s emotional ghosts. Crime gets worse when it’s hotter.

I’m sure my mood is affected by the lingering Covid (does it count as long when you feel shitty 7 weeks later?) as well as the general unease in American politics. I’ll do what I can to shake it. But I’ll never understand anyone’s affection the season.

Categories
Media Politics

Day 1280 and Campaign Season

I am very much beginning to wish I had not watched the presidential debates. I want to say it’s been amusing to watch the different flavors of panic, but it makes me feel a bit gross.

Schadenfreude feels like a cousin to envy. It’s a dirty vice you shouldn’t be swift to cultivate in yourself even if it’s a very human response. I’d prefer to cultivate what virtues I can embody even if imperfectly.

I don’t want to lose my head just because everyone else seems to be doing so but it’s hard not pay attention to the politics when it’s the 4th of July week. I know I can’t do anything about national politics so I continue locally and on issues where we can have clear impact like housing and regulatory reform.

It’s possible that having more hands on experience with on community boards and with local permitting made the more tangible aspects of “Yes In My Neighborhood” campaigns clear to me.

I would prefer to be active in my contributions and focus on solutions. Am I angry and afraid when I see national politics and grand geopolitical news? Of course. If I thought about it too much I’d remember that everyone involved is human just like me. Then I’d worry even more. So I’ll try to focus on moving what I can.

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Emotional Work Media

Day 1279 and Not The Whole Story

I have recently been prioritizing correcting mistaken impressions of the world. As the rationalist set say, I like to update my heuristics.

It’s just not all that uncommon to believe wrong things and for the wrong reasons. We find out with alarming about retracted studies, updates to long held beliefs about culture or politics, or simply something galling about reality. And so sometimes we have to adjust our priors. We never have the whole story.

I recently found myself comparing myself to another person only to get quickly reminded of a set of circumstances that made our situations basically incomparable. I simply didn’t have the whole picture.

My mother loved a hippie bumper sticker about the folly of sincere youthful knowledge.

Quick ask your teenage for advice while they still know everything

The best part of middle age is discovering just how little you know. It can feel paralyzing at times. I’m sure you can imagine how “I don’t know the whole story” can be interpreted in many ways. I hope to be on the sunny side of learning.

Two men sit on a bus. On the dark side facing a dark mountain we see scared sad man with a “I don’t know the whole story” thought bubble. On the bright side of the bus with a wide vista a man thinks “I don’t know the whole story!”
Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1274 and Anger is Secondary

I am in a pocket of emotions today that I’m working through by writing. I’ve been told that anger is what’s called a secondary emotion.

Some metaphors that are helpful to understanding what is meant by a “secondary emotion” are thinking of anger as a boiling cauldron or a volcano. What you see isn’t the whole picture. It is the steam coming off something deeper. If you prefer cooler (literally) metaphor, the Gottman Institute calls it the Anger Iceberg.

The Anger Iceberg via Choosing Therapy from the Gottman Institute.

I am unsure what mix of feelings are making up my roiling cauldron. I’m struggling to feel them as chilly like an iceberg. The heat of it feels closer to my current experience than something frozen. But you get the picture. Looking underneath is important.

And underneath the anger disappointment, hurt, and frustration are all emotions I can “touch” as I explore ny feelings. But it’s underneath a roiling boiling mess that is only clear in glimpses.

I imagine I’m not the only one who struggles to see where the primary emotions. The optimism I have temperamentally abuts against a shared reality that feels angry.

I intend to watch a debate between two unpopular geriatric candidates for President of the United States of America. Of course being angry about that is secondary to a host of other more salient emotions. We must reach. It is crucial to reach those emotions if we desire to change as a nation.

Categories
Community

Day 1273 and Context Window

The fracturing of the social web has made it harder to connect person to person.

The enjoyment of sharing a platform or a protocol with other humans is undermined as grifters and opportunists bang against artificial intelligence slop and algorithmic manipulation. It’s just not as fun to be online in that atmosphere.

I happen to like putting a little more of humanity out here on the edges of the great social media seas. I am not everyone’s cup of tea but at least you know what flavor I am.

Perhaps humans need longer context windows just as much as our artificial intelligence. I’ll allow Google’s Keyword blog on DeepMind’s longer context window to explain.

Context windows are important because they help AI models recall information during a session. Have you ever forgotten someone’s name in the middle of a conversation a few minutes after they’ve said it, or sprinted across a room to grab a notebook to jot down a phone number you were just given? Remembering things in the flow of a conversation can be tricky for AI models, too — you might have had an experience where a chatbot “forgot” information after a few turns. That’s where long context windows can help.

What is a long context window?

Part of my affection for “blogging” whether it’s on my own WordPress powered website or Twitter (remember when we called it a microblogging service?) is that it gives the chance to establish a large context window for me.

You can definitely make predictions about me based on what I’ve shared. If I am as complex as million token window (which is what Google’s Gemini can now handle) I would honestly be surprised. So go ahead and augment any conversations you have with me with the wider context of Julie. It’s my goal that it allows us to connect better.

Categories
Startups

Day 1255 and Venture Nurture

I sometimes wonder why venture capital hasn’t coded more feminine. The cynic in me say because it makes money and money accords status. Where there is status there are men competing for it. Which is a good thing in my book.

I just happen to find the kind of investing I do to be so feminine in character. I’d never really thought of my gender when I got into startups simply because I was a founder with a problem and technology solved it for me. I was a nerd about a few very specific things and the market agreed with me.

But now as the wider world has forced me reconsider gender and how my identity gets used by others in how I do business. And I do see that I approach my investing in traditionally feminine terms. I wasn’t that kind of founder. But I am that kind of investor. 

I nurture. I love finding a weirdo working on something in a weird corner of the internet. Nothing makes me happier than telegraphing out that I am weird and getting back other weirdos. I like to listen. I like to learn. I don’t mind unpolished or outlandish or even absolutely crazy. My best deals all started in DMs

Nerds aren’t a polished people. They may lack all kinds of social graces. They will often not care about anything but the thing they are obsessing over. And I happen to find this to be a good thing.

Not everyone agrees that we should work with their lack of graces. Ruxandra Teslo discussed how weird nerds are being pushed from institutions like academia.

Weird Nerds are being driven out of academia by the so-called Failed Corporatist phenotype”

Ruxandra Teslo

I am just absolutely here for the weird nerds. They are my tribe and I see it as part of my path to help bring more of them up behind me. To nurture is a feminine virtue. I am happy to bring it to my founders. They should all feel safe coming to me because they know that I am one of them and my goal is to see them thrive.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1242 and Finding You

My “emotional work” tag has years of self exploration. One aspect of self understanding that remains elusive for so many of us is the belief that authenticity is the goal over mere improvement.

I’ve come to see the goal of emotional work as the work you do to to find yourself. You aren’t trying to improve yourself (though there may be areas you want to improve) but rather find the truth of who you are underneath conditioning from family or culture like fear and shame.

The ways that we don’t love ourselves are the ways in which we haven’t embraced who we are. That’s why authenticity over self improvement is such a helpful framing.

I’d recommend this podcast from AoA on the matter. Yes I’m in my Joe Hudson era. I’ve not decided if I want to apply for the summer master class though my first experience was so positive.

In some ways, I feel as if I’ve done so much of this type of work that my ambition is to stop looking for myself and simply be myself.

Being and becoming are fluid states so I have to recognize the flux of coming in and out of finding myself. I feel very much in myself at the moment and searching further instead of living in my current authenticity seems like a stretch. I’ll have a lot of “doing” next week so I’m sure I’ll find whatever kind of “being” I am as I go along.