comedown
What I put on hold to write for a month
- my weekly rationality meetups
- my book clubs
- reading any books, even in audiobook form
- figure skating
- my newest cross-stitch, which was almost done
- my local friendships
- my job (to the extent that I can)
- my cozy apartment
- daily access to my lumenators
- a regular diet of Chinese food
What I received
- ~15 blog posts of satisfactory quality
- ~15 blog posts I am actively pleased by
- 25 additional days of shorts weather and blue skies
- a drafts list that is now 75% effortposts by weight rather than 20%
- a permanent widening of my ability to write, a new sense that I can just do it even when there is no inspiration
- dozens of photos of shoes
- some other nice photos
- my first brush with virality, and my second
- twenty nice emails from strangers who read my blog after I went viral
- one nice (but scary) inquiry from the CBC
- in-depth feedback on my writing from a half dozen writers who I've admired for a very long time
- new and re-ignited friendships
- many hugs
- a handful of midnight conversations around the fire (should have been more)
- 2.5 crushes
- one midnight gaming session
What I learned about my writing
- I was confused and shy about my purpose for writing, which is to reach people who are like me and to let them know that they are not alone. I wanted to not go viral, but have my pieces reach the people who would like my writing, but have no one besides them read it. This is an incoherent thing to want (at least for now). I'm still not certain how to navigate this but I turned on email subs for my blog so it's not basically impossible to subscribe to. I'm glad to have at least noticed the confusion.
- I use a lot of run-on sentences and can stand to use fewer of them.
What I learned about life outside writing
- It's good to take the case off my phone to make it so much more of a pain in the ass to use
- I try to think of my phone as a cursed amulet that is trying to suck out my soul. Having no case helps a lot with this since the texture of the back of my phone is so nice (how can something matte be so slippery??) and I keep finding myself literally rubbing it like a freak. and then I can go "yeah it makes sense that I am creepily rubbing the cursed amulet that is trying to suck out my soul"
- I should have more soylent. I was right ten years ago that my food enjoyment should be barbell shaped, and it was a mistake to listen to the haters and instead try to equalize it. I should care much less about making the average meal tasty because it does not actually give me utility commensurate with the additional effort it takes until it reaches a fairly high threshold.
- just get the damn chocolate soylent, who cares if it's the worst flavour
- Sometimes, men are really nice and also kind of attractive and oops it turns out I am actually a Kinsey 5 and not a 6.
- I am alright at flirting but terrible at closing and can stand to practice that more.
- I am not an introvert.
- To mangle EY, it's so true that bravery is more like putting on a clown suit more than it is like putting on a badass all black outfit.
- Corollary: one can tap into bravery by going "okay, shit, time to get in the clown suit." Like when you need to ask for an embarrassing thing back.
- I can be more vulnerable
- I am not as smart as I think I am
- Being incredibly smart is not the only way to significantly affect the lightcone
Leaving the oasis
What a terribly wonderful month. I loved it all and never wanted it to end. I wrote many things I wanted to, and even squeezed in an art project. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. I got to spend a month living in Lighthaven. And like many others who came from far away, I felt recurring heartbreak at the abundance on offer.
Comedowns are common after any sort of time away from normal life. I paid upfront, and then I lived in a frictionless and utopian dreamworld where every need was catered to in a beautiful mediterranean climate. Now I am back in a land where the ground and sky are both icy grey slush, I have a day job, I must vacuum my own floors, and food and masseurs do not magically appear at regular intervals. But if only that was a fully adequate explanation for how I feel in the aftermath.
A rolling game we played through Inkhaven: on a massive whiteboard wall, write down each year of the 21st century, and start listing the best thing of each year: songs, video games, movies, blog posts. Then, watch as your picks get slowly replaced by the other residents over time.
I replaced the 2024 pick for blog posts, putting Internet Princess's No Good Alone on the board. I picked this piece because I adore Internet Princess, and she writes about many missing moods that I think rationalists should think about, at least sometimes.
Here's an excerpt from that blog post:
Isolationists have one very strong argument on their side โ when youโre alone, thereโs no one there to hurt you, even accidentally. Thereโs no one there to throw your own flaws into stark relief. Thereโs no one who you might hurt with bursts of uncontrollable emotion or human carelessness. Itโs hard to be hurt, and perhaps even harder to hurt the people you love โ why not cut the risk, lock the doors, and live a life of robotic, impersonal, action-oriented optimization?ย ... People, on the other hand, challenge us. They infuse our life with stakes. You can hurt a friend or partner or lose them forever if you refuse vulnerability or reject growth โ the same cannot be said of a therapist, for instance, which makes them far safer companions.
I love this piece, but I somehow didn't think it applied to me; or if it did, it applied to me only a smidge. I don't chisel away at myself in a dark solitary room to try to make myself adequate and presentable to others, I'm rational enough to know how counterproductive that is. Plus, how can I be said to lock myself away if I run weekly meetups, and have friends all over the world that I travel to see regularly? And I am sooo good at being vulnerable, I even run authentic relating games!
But I happened to reread it on my first night back, and felt a sharp sting of recognition.
Here's what happened, I think: I had left my contented little oasis with my little meetups and my nice apartment and my self-sufficient routine. I went to a place where people I trust (people in the same community as me, people who have the same values I do) would take care of all of my needs for a month. Cradled by them, I wrote forty thousand words, discovered that people like my writing, got feedback from writers I admire, nursed several crushes, got hugs and midnight conversations and implicit permission to join every conversational circle I saw, discovered that I can socialize an insane amount every single day and not get tired of human contact, and concluded that I am not an introvert.
What a wonderful experience. What a priceless gift. What a horrible realization, that previous to this, I've been living at arm's length from everyone. I had the controls for a faucet of human connection, and I guarded it jealously. I left it at a slow drip because I thought it was all that I needed, and all that I could handle.
When I gave up that control, life rushed in โ connection, recognition, even a little romance. To my credit, I was able to accept some of the deluge. But I am shy and I never had much practice, and I don't think I took advantage as much as I should have.
But even the amount I was able to bear accepting was beautiful. Even in a program where it wasn't the main thing, when everyone had to keep excusing themselves to go write, when I myself struggled with feelings of alienation and inadequacy, I felt so incredibly lucky to be in a community with these people, to have found them.
And when I returned home after a month, when I looked at it with fresh eyes, it started to look less like an oasis and more like the world's most luxurious solitary confinement cell.
Now I want to say yes to more than is available here. More life, more connection, more romance. A friend once told me that it's wise to move cities often, because each city whispers a different thing to you, and each city brings out different facets of yourself. I adore the version of me that emerged in Berkeley. I want to nurture her more. And I don't think there is enough for her here.