Tag: Time

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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

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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Media

Day 1186 and Return To Non-Normalcy

I first sensed it when I picked up a copy of the Financial Times going through Heathrow in February. I was behind the news cycle. I read through the pink paper and felt informed.

Normally I wouldn’t be satisfied with just one news source. No matter how much I overweight my personal preferences to business papers I wouldn’t limit myself to just those publications.

But then I realized I had neither the time nor the patience to get up on the nuances of the day. I love the news business and even I felt weary about wading through the firehouse.

If a new hound like me who loves reading reactionaries of all stripes couldn’t do more than scan some financial numbers how did everyone else feel? Not good, not good at all.

The Normie Restoration

We are reaching a fascinating moment in history in which you can be shockingly well informed about almost anything in real time.

Naturally this means we “know” less than we ever did. I can read propaganda from every viewpoint straight from the source straight on Telegram chats. The most informed know they getting just a fraction of the story.

During the Great Dislocation (roughly 2019-2023 though many of us went into much earlier), there was a new openness to seeing beyond institutional consensus. We saw a flourishing of open condemnation of all forms of institutional knowledge and media was at the epicenter of much of that rage.

Many groups did not do well with the newfound power they had found in the hands of shifting alliances and new attention.

My theory is that the lunatic fringes of both the left & right have handled their digital powers poorly. As they did not handle the attention with care we will see a return to mass media preferences as people return to “non-normalcy.” Our trust has been spread too thin and too far and everyone has to tend to their own.

Who, or even what, ends up being the mass media substitute going forward ks not yet settled as the waning days of cable television & national papers will not disappear until the Boomers move on.

We are starting to realize little value is accrued by sourcing news from many sources as more competing narratives spin out to Cray Cray Land. Everyone has become audience captured. And not all audiences are equal. Not all voices are equal either.

People may think I’m insinuating that it’s about control or truth or ideological niche. I want to disabuse you of this notion. Media is about attention. People with different goals want your attention focused on what they think is important.

Anyone with responsibility has an attention limit. People with responsibilities are the people with power. They can’t manage with endless attention conflicts. They can and do resolve these conflicts on their attention all the time.

And many of them are about to resolve that by not paying attention. So you have to ask yourself if you think they are wrong. The new non-normal isn’t very forgiving of distraction.

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Internet Culture Travel

1165 and Adjusting

I slept a lot last night. Have moved four time zones in as many days with the additional “joy” of daylight savings my body is confused. My mind is not.

My initial impulse today was to push through it with exercise, routines, self care and being present in the real world but after the basics were done I was simply throwing myself into the timelessness of the news cycle. My only clock is the rotation of the planet and even that is arbitrary

Oddly I think this was a good decision in times of adjustment. My body adapts to the sun easily and quickly. My mind however is set on some permanent exterior hive mind that is a 24 cycle. There is no perfect syncing of this to be had nor any shift that seems to make sense to me except “awake” and “asleep”

For most people this strange permanent awareness would be very hard on the nervous system. And indeed it is. And yet the thrum of a global population coming online and offline is soothing and regulating in its own way. Each opening of a new market bouncing me along to a new continent with new people.

I say that this is helpful to me and not harmful only say with any degree of certainty because I regularly dose myself off being “extremely online” into very offline remote living. Being extremely offline has not once improved a single metric for me. This annoys me as much as I was annoyed that removing gluten didn’t improve anything for me.

If anything I seem to self regulate better with maximally online presence. I would have previously assumed something is wrong with me but now perhaps I can explore that it’s an advantage. I come on and off like with whenever I jump back in. The past can be filled in and the future isn’t here yet.

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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
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Travel

Day 1161 and Note Long Connection Time

Getting to the far flung corners of the world takes a little bit of patience when you’ve chosen another far flung place to call home.

Montana’s Bozeman International Airport has all the ease and efficiency of a world class luxury destination. Yellowstone and Big Sky are draws from almost every major cosmopolitan hub.

So I tend to return home via a major hub with the occasional overnight or two. Sometimes I’ll even do a couple days at a hub so I can get in work and seeing folks.

As I return from the Balkans I’ll do a night in London. I’ve been told on every ticket to ‘note the long layover” as if I wouldn’t notice I needed a hotel reservation at an airport.

But then I’ll come through to El Segundo. Till then I’ll be noting the long connection and seeing to myself in waiting lines.

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Aesthetics Culture

Day 1158 and Subtext

All writing should be labeled as under “self help” or at very least tagged as “advice” if we are honest with ourselves.

Everything from code documentation to Twitter shitpoasts and Shakespeare contains a lesson. Discerning the subtext is more or less complicated depending on how layered the text is meant to be.

Sometimes, as the beloved XCKD comic reminds us, if we stare too long at an artifact we insert our own meaning.

Joe Biden eating a sandwich

I like to rewatch television shows as modern so-called prestige dramas encourage subtext. I’ve been rewatching “For All Mankind” and have started to whisper “Hi Bob” as a joke. Fun fact, that phrase may have been the first documented instance of a drinking game.

My timeline’s Bob Newhart lends himself to a bit of cultural attention as he’s not only the subject of the astronauts’s own rewatching habits on For All Mankind but is also a side character actor in Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon as the inspirational scientist Professor Proton. I’m watching the latter show as a comedic palette cleanser.

It’s like I’m getting several multiverses at once. I’ve got my own timeline, the alternate history of For All Mankind and Sheldon Cooper’s timeline. Somehow in mine we’ve got a lot less scientific progress but like astronaut Danielle Poole in For All Mankind I’ve got plenty of television history at my disposal. She knows everything in which Bob Newhart starred in her timeline too.

I say this is all self-help in some form because it’s art that we work over, refine and theorize till we’ve become connoisseurs of every conceivable layer of subtext. We revise and improve and apply those lessons to ourselves.

It’s best not to project too much. Some of those lessons, like the Biden sandwich in the XCD, should remain personal I imagine. They might not mean anything except to the viewer. Even Freud (well it’s apocryphal) had to admit that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Seems like someone should tell the literary Marxists that before their advice gets over applied.

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 1153 and Open Roads

I went on a “long” drive today. It took three hours go about 160 kilometers, which is for Americans about 35 miles per hour. The speed limit was technically 60 mph (or 90km an hour) but traffic was everywhere and open road a mere dream.

Americans are so spoiled for our interstate system. I’d encourage anyone who can to rent a car and drive the roads of greater Europe and remind yourself how good we have it with Eisenhower’s legacy. Highways are not always open roads.

The various forms of traffic ranged from other vehicles to actual sheep. Spring is around the corner in the Mediterranean and little lambs tend to wander. Police, and pedestrians wandered even far from the city and nowhere was there more than a few kilometers to open the throttle. The black Mercedes I rode in roared through needless roundabouts.

I wasn’t exactly in civilization during most of the drive. I was going from a fairly major city to a beach town. In between was not so picturesque villages and ample signs of degrowth.

If Americans are saddened by rest stop towns and hollowed out empty America, do not make the mistake that it’s unique to us. Inflation, corruption, poverty and overbearing government are everywhere that we tolerate it. If we must have an expensive bureaucracy the least they can give us is the open road.

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Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 1143 and Wastewater

I’m not a fan of Ed Sheeran but this quote on the creative faucet came to me today through Julian Shapiro’s Twitter profile.

If you turn a dirty tap on it’s gonna flow shit water out for a substantial amount of time and then clean water’s gonna start flowing.

Ed Sheeran on Songwriting

As a fan of practice and repetition (you need only look at my daily numeric total for evidence), this metaphor spoke to me.

I do feel as if I’m currently in the wastewater phase of a few things. It’s just lots of shit and unrelenting in quantity. I imagine this is relatable to a lot of people.

It’s my hope that the clean creative waters will flow more easily soon.