“When we truly feel comfortable, the desire to improve is natural— no antagonism required, no debt incurred.” (deleted source)
you can make yourself a little more comfortable, as a treat. you can take lil actions to make your environment a little nicer for yourself. that feels good. it’s nice to feel good. it’s nice to feel like you’re someone who cares about you.
(2025jan13) i’ve been going to many people’s houses lately while looking for one to buy, and it’s striking how some houses put me at ease, and some houses make me anxious and stress me out. this is one of those “well, duh” observations that nonetheless got me doing a Big Think
tbc
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— did you forget that you live here? —
2021-march-5: the title of this section is directly lifted from a tweet by @itsmeArdenLeigh that changed my life
one of my bigger regrets is not doing more to reshape my environment to suit me. i think i have some feelings left over from when I was a kid and I felt like I didn’t have any sovereignty over myself
I used to jokingly describe my current home as a halfway house, which… is still how it feels. wife and I bought it when we were broke 22yo’s who couldn’t afford a fridge or washing machine, let alone a proper renovation. we’re 30 now. feel like I let inertia keep me in the past
lots of strange little things add up for this. like, I’m a very tall guy in a short country so nothing fits me, and I’m just *used* to things being that way, and it never occurs to me otherwise
intend to make as big as possible of a dent in this in 2021. i’m done living like I’m a slightly-unwanted guest in my own life
part of doing this will mean spending more $ than I’ve been comfortable spending– and part of *that* will mean making more $ than I’ve been comfortable making, which will mean… being more intentional about things, taking on more responsibility… [cracks knuckles] let’s do it
this goes deeper than it looks. at this point on twitter some people think of me as “a big(ger) account” or whatever, and/but a big part of how I got to where I am (which I don’t necessarily recommend) is by being good at making myself secondary to others
it might seem strange and bizzaro/inverted for someone who’s a loud, prolific, highly-visible person to describe themselves as “secondary”, but I think I’m being honest here. It’s complicated, there are many angles to it
people pleasing as a skill is a great servant but a terrible master at some point you gotta learn to respect yourself funnily, when you do that, you lose mainly the worst “friends”, and good people love you even more for it: for your sovereignty, self-respect and non-neediness
[contented sigh] man I was so angry at my stuff just a couple of hours ago. part of it is the terrible user experience of computer things, but really, the reason I got so mad is that I was upset with myself for how I felt like I was disrespecting me (current mood: i’m tired of how there’s just so much everything everywhere)
i have truly had to raise myself, and i goddam did it. some funny legacy issues here and there, but eh. I didn’t think i’d get this far. props and gratitude to the artists and teachers, the books and the bloggers, the kind internet strangers, ya’ll are the real MVPs
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make yourself comfortable
“When we truly feel comfortable, the desire to improve is natural— no antagonism required, no debt incurred.”
^ this sentence just got me to clean my desk from a place of love (and not frustration/annoyance). i am allowed to be comfortable at my desk where I work
Christopher Alexander: “places which are comfortable… have no inner contradictions, because there is no little restlessness disturbing them. […] do it carefully, with much attention”
this in turn just made me realize that the tweets I’ve printed out and stuck to my wall to motivate me have a bit of an anxious, uncomfortable energy to them. thanking them for their service and lovingly taking them down
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24nov2024: thinking about how this has some parallels with soften the ground
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How to produce living structure in the world
Notes from a talk by Christopher Alexander I believe? Yeah: patterns in architecture, transcript here
Streets, gardens
Places which are themselves living, alive
sad assumption: for the most part since ~WW2, no ability to produce living structure in the world
living structure needed to sustain and nurture us
Existed in early urban settlements
Debatable, some people say it’s fine. architect of this room would say that
It isn’t fine, it’s a hell of a problem, serious, affects every man woman child on earth
We are so ignorant about how we do this, lamentable, serious
Population is growing, most habitable environment built in the last 50 years, it’s not nurturing. Drastic matter.
what makes an environment nurturing?
how to scale?
Developers, hotel chains, railroad companies…
how could one possibly get a hold of the massive amount of construction happening on earth, have it generated in a good/living fashion
good environments: every part is extremely adapted to its particularities
traditional societies, people built their own dwellings, streets, etc adaptation was natural – generate living structure
always being things back to the human person
Parking lot
Do I feel myself to be more whole
Living structures can only be produced by unfolding wholeness
Maintaining the whole at each step by gradually introducing differentiations
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Ryan Singer interpreting Christopher Alexander: “A pattern language is what we create for a project to specify this project at the right level of abstraction. It gives us a stepwise path through the problem-solving process, so that we can, step-by-step, adapt each center to the neighboring centers, and weave them into a field of centers which are all working together. It allows us to avoid overspecifying all the details that we don’t understand in the beginning.” (substack note link)
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