Tag: Life

Categories
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
Politics Travel

Day 1170 and The Machine

I hate failing. The sense of doomed futility I have when I interact with the broken bits of the American bureaucracy weighs on me. Every time a crucial piece of the business of government fails I feel helpless. Like I am a loser.

I feel deeply that the machine has ground out some remaining spark of hope in me.

“It’s the hope that kills you”

Phrase Ted Lasso ain’t too crazy about

I spent some time today feel like it was the hope thar kills me. I felt it deeply.

But I couldn’t wallow in it. Being made victim to a system is awful but I am not a victim.

Some time passed and I reminded myself that while I can accept finite disappointment, I can never accept losing the grace of an infinite capacity for hope.

“I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. … See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief.”

Ted Lasso

I’ve written a lot about how broken the process of coming to America especially when you try to do so legally and transparently. It’s a challenge to get even basic travel documents like tourist visas.

I see cases on socially media daily of award winners, brilliant engineers, academics, and simple good faith aspirants who wish to spend time with the American dream and are denied.

I have hope that we can recognize that tourists, students, entrepreneurs and others that genuinely wish to contribute to our nation deserve an efficient transparent system that lets people come to America.

It should be unacceptable that these systems are unaccountable and impossible to navigate. It shouldn’t feel like we are living within a Kafka novel when getting a visa. This is America not the Soviet eastern block.

I believe that the network state is coming for badly run governments. But it cannot come soon enough. It may sound dramatic but consider that venal, impossible to navigate and expensive government serves none of us and harms the markets, businesses and people. It’s an embarrassment to our national character.

The longer we tolerate these state of affairs the closer we edge to anarcho-tyranny. When the government and help you but it can hurt you. We should be ashamed as Americans that we let this monstrous machine do us so much harm.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1167 and Good Faith

Do you want something for nothing? Maybe that’s human nature. I try not to be too cynical.

But then I am occasionally presented with information in which I must confront that some people are in fact fine with getting something for nothing.

“We live in a society!” I scream into the abyss. Maybe I’m the idiot and we haven’t actually agreed to fair dealings. Maybe I’m actually the rube.

I don’t want to give up on my high trust ways. I am not optimizing for the best possible outcome for myself. I care quite a bit about the greater good. Maybe I’m an idiot for doing so.

But I’d rather be an idiot and optimistic than a a brilliant cynic. It makes me unhappy to consider how many people are simply happy to be presented with something for nothing and never have to contend with its costs.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 1166 and Consistency

I have a strange gap between my self image and my reality. I don’t think of myself as a “consistent” person. And yet the data on myself I have collected over the years disagrees with this self image.

I don’t know if I’ve always seen myself this way, but certainly since my early adulthood I’ve seen myself as all over the place. I am not sure it’s even an opinion I should hold about myself but it seems well entrenched so has to come from childhood.

I have a self imagine in which I see myself as physically inconsistent with almost no capacity to predict what one day to the next will bring. I take this to a bad place fast. If i I am inconsistent then I am unreliable. I can rationalize that to myself but I don’t think it’s actually true.

There are multiple indicators that suggest I am wrong in my self assessment. I am very consistent across a number of critical areas. This blog is a very public demonstration of consistency. I reliably put something up every single day.

Am I proving something to myself or am I simply refusing to see myself as I am? If I am consistent then I reliable in that it can be predicted with high confidence what I will do.

If I do in fact have high consistency and high reliability then why do not see it? Is it even important that I am predictable? Businesses like predictably. So do markets. Civilization runs on consistency. But do I run on consistency too? And what incentive do I have to see myself in one way and not the other?

Categories
Community

1164 and Back to The Land

After a quick run through El Segundo I am back in Montana for the moment. Nothing makes you appreciate American more than spending time away from it.

While complaints about travel and its challenges always make you appreciate home, it’s really only upon return to you notice just how good we have it as Americans. Everything is just a little bit easier.

Everything from acquiring groceries to taking a shower is somehow less of a hassle. Getting out of the local airport and getting provisioned was a breeze.

Which is good as I’m tired. It’s good to be back on my own land and in my own country.

Categories
Travel

Day 1162 and AirTag

Heathrow remains a bit of a shitshow and impossible to navigate. I got lost in a liminal space where all I could hear was announcements about their staffing shortages but I could see no other human in sight.

A long concrete hallway in Terminal 5 at Heathrow without any people

I got in a nice peaceful 20 minute walk without another soul. And then I was thrown into the maw of baggage claim and lost luggage.

I typically use a 3 bag cascade system anytime I’m on the road for an extended period. A checked bag, a small roller and a backpack.

I was doing a short positioning flight to get my Heathrow transcontinental. At the originating flight on British Airways I was told you can’t check in for the transcontinental so for the 3 hour “hop” flight I should check both (full flight and no overhead storage is a constant issue these days) so I should collect them at Heathrow and re-check in the morning.

Always travel with AirTags.

Somehow despite me not flying BA for the transcontinental, and the most salient fact of me not even being checked in for my longer transcontinental flight, the damn bags got “checked through” and are lost somewhere in Heathrow. They were at another terminal as the tags show waiting for my flight overnight. This was a mistake on almost everyone’s part at the various airlines.

I’m wiped as I spent spent two hours of my evening trying to locate last night but thankfully in my backpack I always carry an overnight PJ set, my medications, electronics & the “wet” toiletries that Heathrow polices like the Stasi in a quart baggie. I overnighted in a hotel just find.

I’m trying to find the luggage and AirTags insist it’s at Terminal 3. The airline says it’s in “The Bin” and should be sorted into my flight. I’ve got no other way of assessing if that’s true so I may I’ll end up in El Segundo with nothing but black Gap sweats.

My usual system is designed for this chaos and I rarely let the small grey roller out of my sight and never let my backpack be taken from my person except at security. I won’t deviate from it ever again.

The story has a happy ending even if I don’t know if my bags will make it yet. I was able to enjoy a dim sum breakfast at the Cathay Pacific lounge and get a copy of the Financial Times.

Dan Dan Noodles and fresh bao
Categories
Travel

Day 1160 and Head West Young Woman

I’m wrapping up my current trip through the southern Mediterranean and the Balkans. I have been doing travel as part of my own effort to do on the ground work cultivating networks.

“I cultivate movements, memes, degenerates, eccentrics and engineers. I’ve made many trips to far flung corners of the European continent including extended stays in the Baltics and the Balkans.”

Day 1155

I particularly enjoyed getting to see the practical efforts of crypto communities in the Balkans. The road to success is long and I like to walk the early paths and less popular trails in my searches for the weirdos who I believe make the best founders.

I’ll be heading to Los Angeles soon. I will be touring El Segundo where I’ll finally get see one of my portfolio founders in person. If you are in the area and working on something you think I can help with as an investor or advisor send me a DM on Twitter or drop me an email Julie at chaotic dot capital.

Categories
Aesthetics Emotional Work Uncategorized

1156 and On and Off

I don’t have anything to say right now. I had an offline day in which I stayed in the moment and reflected.

Sometimes it’s simply a choice to be in the problems of a given moment. You could just not fixate. The frictions of any given day are a choice. If you choose to experience a problem more then once it’s not done teaching you.

I’m always hopeful that I’ll learn my lesson. That each time I’m “on” and experiencing the same problem again is because I’ve chosen to keep at the lesson.

Maybe it’s fine to get comfortable. The older I get the more I envy my stupid younger self who has the energy to be a total moron. Now if I’m a total moron my life stands still. I have to actively choose to learn from the problems in front of me.

And so as I chose to jump back into another round of action I can only hope I’ve learned my lesson. Truly sometimes I wish I was a faster learner. But then I see I learn at all and that’s not at all a guarantee. Plenty of people work hard at just staying in the same place.

Entropy tugging at our bodies erodes the coastlines of our personal boundaries. Hopefully whatever is reshaped by the pressure emerges stronger. Mostly it’s just cliff’s falling into the sea. In other news, I drove up a long coastal road and contemplated thermodynamics. It was lovely.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1151 and Waiting Line

Do you believe
In what you see
Motionless wheel
Nothing is real
Wasting my time
In the waiting line
Do you believe
In what you see

Waiting Line Zero 7 Sophie Barker

I like to do errands with noise canceling headphones on these days. The ambient noise of public life has become more grating as I get older. Cue up lo-fi chill hop beats you can study/relax to Bojack Horseman joke.

Or in my case, a down tempo bit on waiting in lines from some softer era when Garden State was all the rage. I have to admit I’ve never seen the movie.

It seems apt that the more alienated we become from the human component of public life that the more the waiting in line feels like an unreal unreal activity.

We run our little programs in our little lives. We accept being NPCs for a little convenience. You don’t want to slow up everyone’s business with any of your troubles.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 1148 and ayyy lmao

Ayyy lmao

One of my Twitter mutuals Visa of Friendly Ambitious Nerd fame has a meme format he’s perfected with the Scylla and Charbrydis mythos that has become colloquially known as ayy lmao.

If one must sail between monsters representing inescapable and opposing existential threats (yes that’s a metaphor for life) then the only path through is to just sail on.

I see a lot of “fuck it, we ball” energy in the air now. It’s been emerging slowly but surely over the last two years or so. The inclination to say to hell with the odds represents a commitment to action. With Safetyism everywhere who wouldn’t simply want to say fuck it ayy lmao?