WILL - Jan 31

What I Learned Lately is that there are a few benefits to having a vegetarian partner (who doesn't read your blog).

i - Obviously you eat healthier.
ii - You slowly see that you could be a vegetarian too someday. However, not today.
iii - You discover how many ways you can cook broccoli.
iv - You see how often there is no substitute for the real thing (steak, burger, cream).
v - Sneaking off on Tuesday afternoons for ten hot wings becomes an extreme pleasure.

New blogging idea

It turns out I don't have something to say every day. 

So, I will now stop trying to say things. I will just start posting things I have learned that day.

Maybe if I learn something for many days in a row I will eventually have something to say.  

...

Today I learned being calm and positive while others are blinded by aggressive anger is not only good fun, but it is also effective. 

It is fun because your calm often, strangely, makes them angrier. But, more importantly, it also gives them an invitation. If you are calm, you are implicitly welcoming them to join you, no questions asked.  

Misbehaved Heros

I was recently reminded that my two biggest heroes (outside of friends and family) publicly don't support each other. It seems that they actually detest each other.

Heroes are heroes because they are not wrong, at least in ways that matter. But both my heroes can't be right here. AHHHH.

This might be a good topic for an essay...

Sucks again

Wow I suck at this. But I will not lose. Jonny, fuck off.

Conversations

All I did today was have good, meaningful, and energizing conversations.

Doing this every day wouldn't work as I wouldn't have time for immersing myself in the torrent of life that creates the content for these conversations.

But doing this - having these conversations - once in a while, is awesome. I can pull back out of the torrent and appreciate the big and the small, make deeper connections, and find ideas and inspiration to jump back in.

Nonsense

Upon walking off the basketball court and seeing a massive salsa lesson I marveled at it and thought "wow we humans are strange...what is the point of dancing?"

It didn't hit me for a few minutes the same could be said about playing basketball.

Pelu

I went to the barber twice today. Don't ask me why.

It was great to watch him take pride in what he was doing.

I need more of that in my life.

Need no more

Rereading some of my notes along side reading Ray Dalio's Principles has me feeling that I have all the knowledge I need to live a pretty great life.

I could stop learning here and it would take many lifetimes to experience and make my own the principles and wisdom given to me.

But I don't think it is going to work that way :)

The planned vacation

Why do I always buy into the illusion of beautiful views and rented cars equal vacation.

My whole life is beautiful and I don't need a car at all.

Taleb Style - Day 1

Good Start?

First order of business was emphatically break the clearest rule - eating paleo. We woke up and went directly for a cheat meal Dwayne Johnson would approve of.

Sure, eating paleo technically means low sugar, no fast-burning carbohydrates, and nothing processed (I managed to disregard every one of these). But if you and your girlfriend love these waffles and smoothies over breakfast once a week (and you back it up with some heavy lifting), I can imagine him agreeing that this is a case where victory of the particular over the general is called for.

Rounding out the day with some flowers, writing letters over coffee, scratching a seemingly nonsensical curiosity, a long walk, and perhaps a glass of red wine to finish off the night...

...I might get use to this. 

That didnt work

I had the intention to write a well written blog today.

That didn't seem to be enough to to make it happen.

Tomorrow we try again...
It was a great day though.

Thus blog is shit

The intent is great - clarify my thoughts and create a time capsule. But the execution is lacking. Reboot time.

Beginning

Tomorrow I begin an experiment.

The curiosity of what's to come is pleasant and the nervousness of not wanting it to go wrong or peter out has me energized.

Disagreement

Forget arguments. Even simple disagreements are unsettling - borderline frustrating.

Really knowing what you are disagreeing about is rare. My guess is that over 90% of the time we just talking past each other.

On the rare occasions that both parties uncover the topic they are really disagreeing about, it makes things much easier.

Maybe "agreeing to disagree" is only a pussy move when you don't know what your disagreeing about?

Taleb Style

I was captured by the idea from A.J. Jacobs The Year of Living Biblically, where he lived rules from the Bible and learned a lot doing so. But rather than using a book I have little interest in modeling my life after, why not use one that I am constantly revisiting anyway.

NN Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes is a book of aphorisms from a modern author, who seems to inhabit a world very different from my own. And that is why I find it incredible that is aphorisms ring so true to me and continually call my attention. I imagine we have very few shared experiences, but it feels as though his aphorisms talk, specifically, to my experiences.

I don’t know, maybe it is not him, but rather the power of aphorisms generally. Since they are short and lack a clear context, maybe you helplessly map them onto your imagination and therefore they seem very real to you.

Whatever it is, they all feel real, true, and important to me while reading them. But soon puting the book down, they fade into the background and real life begins again.   

…..

I like to think that I am humble enough to realize that I way I live my life is probably not the most optimal (both for myself and those I care about). But I also subscribe to the hippie notion that you need to find your own way in life rather than modeling yourself after a role model. This seems to be a paradox: admitting there are possible internal universes better than your own, while also believing that your universe can only be at its greatest by following your unique path.

Thankfully this paradox is no match for Bruce Lee, “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own”, promotes growth while avoiding the trap of living your life through someone else's narrative.

But to see what is worth absorbing, what is to be discarded, and what is my own, an experiment is in order: approach life through the aphorisms of NN Taleb for a few months.

To be clear, my goal over the next three point five months is to continue to live my life, full of its contents, beautiful people, and absurdities. But, all the while, live it through a lens - new and by no means my own.  

I have gone through The Bed of Procrustes and selected aphorisms that either could be followed strictly or that would promote me seeing and acting in the world through his eyes.

Pain + reflection

I listed to Ray Dalio spill the secret sauce about learning: Pain plus reflection.

I also experienced some major pain.

Tomorrow reflection.

Good people

"Good people"

I like that description of people. It says almost nothing, but tells you everything you really need to know.

Mine almost complete

Tomorrow the mine will be digging.
I'm excited.

...

The mine was an excuse to come home for my dad's birthday. He really is the best person I know.

Hands on

Today I worked with my hands for the first time in a while.

The end product reflected that I had not used them in while.

But the end feeling tell me that I need to do this more than every once in a while.

Excited for the concert

I have never been to a concert. But I know people get excited for them.

Maybe this is the feeling they have. I am going to see a clear speaker and communicator who I look up to.

Groupie

Different people

There was not much crossover between the folks on Spirit NK 1030 Cancun to Baltimore and the people on the NYC-DC Amtrak train.

I love this place.

Busy Trap.

Saying you are too busy to do the things you want to do is always bullshit.

Either you are confused about what you want to be doing or you just don't have control.

Strange world

Today I stood up at my desk,
ordered computer parts to build a mining rig,
and ate two salads for dinner.

Distracted and tired.
Try again tomorrow.

Mexicans eating chicken wings

Every night walking out of the office I walk past The Wing Army. 

First and foremost I crave stopping in, ordering a bucket and a cold drink (soda or beer), and a sharing a meal with a friend. But I never do (I am eating healthfully and no friends are ever around).

But secondly, after months and months, it is still very strange to see Mexicans eating chicken wings. 2018 in Playa del Carmen is a very strange place.

Motivation

I don't really have a strong 'WHY' as Tony Robbins would say.
So then what really motivates me to do and be more than a enlightened hedonist?

I feel that in the past it was more fear than curiosity.
Now I feel that it has flipped. It is a different feeling.

Lucky Problems

A lot of people I know have won the lottery.
It is incredible (and sad and obvious in hindsight) how winning the lottery brings on another set of problems, stress, and anxiety.
You won the lottery, but are still not yet able to sit back and relax in this moment.
There is a difference however between having real problems and winning the lottery problems.
While the stress during the moments of being stressed feels the same - it if it were a real problem, this feeling often lifts. And when it does, you find yourself grateful for your luck and can smile at your 'problems'.

Logging out of trello

Logging out of trello felt very good.

I believe the things you 'need to do' each day are obvious, you just need to have a little courage to stop fooling and distracting yourself.

I probably have already posted this aphorism but I love it, "If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead." - NNTaleb

Beginning to slow down

The thoughts that capture my attention are beginning to slow down. Removing stimuli from my surrounding has really helped - people, news, internet, travel, noise. That along with some sleep, greens, and activity have me feeling more in control mentally than I have in a while.

I consider myself as being lucky enough to have relatively good mental health. However I am starting to believe strongly that relative is very far from optimum.

I hope this is just the beginning of a journey to explore how very different from 'normal' a good  mental life can be. 

Drives, Desires, Purposes, Meanings, Priorities, etc.

It is becoming increasingly clear that what matters to us in life is not clear. It is not one thing and it does not stay still.

How to deal with this?

Maybe use as heuristic: Don't blatantly act in contradiction with multiple priorities.
Or as Scott Adams suggests: Use personal energy as a sort of master metric that will encompass all others.
Or we could use a regret minimization heuristic to guide us.

Or we could just try to be better at what seems to be the default practice or balancing and juggling them all at once.

Structure

One aphorism that has me puzzled: "If you know with any certainty what your day looks like, you are a little bit dead inside...".

But I also like the idea that structure provides simplicity and power through removing distractions and the profane.

How do you reconcile these two thoughts?

...

My idea is to have an unstructured day AND keep it simple. Focus on what's important, interesting, sacred and fuck the rest.

What is needed is shedding some adult misconceptions, adding some wisdom (acquired through trial and error), and recouping some childlike instincts for not doing what really doesn't matter.

Morning wonder

A friend and I like to tinker with building new habits. I think I found a good and simple one.

It was pointed out in a podcast I recently listened to that waking up every morning is mysterious. It's true. We wake up and can't really explain why the lights came back on (or why they were ever on in the first place).

Waking up and immediately thinking this awesome thought, daily, is seeming to have a good effect and powers up the gratitude and awe modules (if their are such things) to start the day. At the very least it is a better thought than what I "have" to get done today or what's for breakfast.