Turning 24- wrote this on my birthday in June
Life has been interesting and challenging, despite the occasional mundanity. And really, mundanity is caused by a lack of imagination and narrowness of perspective rather than any external condition. We live in the most interesting times in the history of our species. Boredom and frustration only happens because I don’t sufficiently grok how I fit into the larger scheme of things, how I can contribute and ride the waves instead of thrashing around helplessly in the water.
The past year has put me through more change than the past decade. Marriage. Home ownership. Employment. Bills. None of these were a part of my life 2 years ago, and now they are the most prominent, fundamental elements in it. They have forced me to face my weaknesses and shortcomings in a way that I never had to before, and they have similarly helped me become more clear about what my strengths are.
I think I’ve always had a passion for reading and writing, and for art, for expression, for the expansion of consciousness. But I didn’t really know what to do or say about all of that. I have a blog, which is a tool, but what is that tool to be used for? I’ve surfaced fantasies about writing fiction, or writing commentary, or writing fiction-as-commentary. Anything that moves people, I reasoned. All of that was still too vague.
My professional challenges have helped me further refine my thinking of this. I want to live in an interesting, exciting world, and one of the things that bothers me deeply about the present is how many of us hide behind our scripts. We may have inherited these scripts, or we may have been taught and socialized to follow them. I want to help people ditch their scripts and engage more. To have more taste, to be more discerning, to be able to better identify what is worth the time of others.
Of course, before I can teach this to others I have to get better at this myself. I think I’ve gotten better over the past year. But that’s not enough. I need to live and breathe with honesty. I need to be able to say “this is crap” and get rid of it, so I can get to the good stuff.
What have I learnt? I think the most important thing is that you have to make time for stuff that matters to you. When I was a teenager I could count on randomness and serendipity because I has fewer commitments. But now I have a job, I have a daily commute to work. I have less space for randomness. Randomness is insufficient at giving me what I want. I have to schedule. I have to set aside time purposefully- dates with the wife, coffee with old friends, time for reading, time for exercise. I mistakenly believed as a kid that life would turn out fine if I just followed my nose and did whatever I felt like doing at any given time. The problem is that starting on the good stuff is always tedious. I very, very rarely find myself in the gym on a whim. I have to commit to it in advance. Same for reading books, same for dates with the wife. So my central challenge seems to be to manage my time better. I’ve read a lot of literature about this in the past, so I’m familiar with the plethora of options that exist. What’s hard is starting.
At 24 I feel like I can no longer use the “I’m young” excuse when facing reality. It worked at 17, maybe even at 21. But I have real obligations and responsibilities now, and a real opportunity to make a difference to others, to participate in things that I will have been proud of.
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16th June: The privilege of being a working adult
I prefer working life to school. Tremendously so. If I could’ve started work at age 16 or younger, I think I would’ve. It is, for me, much more fulfilling. I feel so much more powerful and independent than I ever did before. I remember feeling so anxious and frustrated in school all the time. I felt squashed, restricted. I didn’t get know then how exactly I was going to make a living, but I knew that I detested the institution that contained and regulated me.
I actually preferred National Service to Junior College. There was marginally less bullshit in that institution- or at least, people within and around the institution acknowledged that some amount of bullshit was a feature of the system. On the other hand, almost nobody acknowledged the bullshit that schools are submerged in. Schools are daycare + systems of of assessment. They exist to serve the broader systems rather than to serve individuals. Any learning or enrichment of the soul, anything beautiful and sacred about school is typically a happy accident. If you’re lucky, these happy accidents may be encouraged- they were when I was at Victoria School. But the fundamental paper chase is exhausting and dehumanizing. Life itself is largely exhausting and dehumanizing. It’s the tradeoff we make for safety.
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22 June: My problems have not changed
I’m tired but not sleepy and it’s one of the hottest nights in years. I’ve been summarising my word vomits and tidying up the bookkeeping mess- part of the reason I stopped was because I had repeated posts and messed up the numbers, and that was demoralizing for me. Filing systems are important, who knew? You were right, every-single-one-of-my-teachers. I apologize and hang my head in shame.
It’s been interesting to revisit my writing and my thinking. What was messy, sketchy and unclear at the time has since become much tidier in my head. I find myself thinking “Oh come on, hurry up! You don’t need to deliberate about that!” I was a much sketchier writer a year ago.
I’m very happy to have journeyed far enough to be able to look back and see where I was from another perspective. It’s a wonderful privilege and I highly recommend it.
Something that’s been on my mind a lot- Dan Gilbert’s latest TED talk about how we systematically underestimate how much we will change between now and any given point in the future. The ‘end of history’ illusion- we’re works in progress who think we’re finished. And one of the best things about doing creative work (and leaving behind a trail) is that you get to witness that change yourself.
Is there anything I need to write about before my brain lets me go to bed? I guess I’ve been feeling guilty that my actions haven’t measured up to my words. A part of me thinks that they never will, and that I should be okay with that. I like to use grand rhetoric and make great empty promises, and the flesh fails the spirit. I think though that I need to meet myself halfway with this. I have to lose the lofty speak and be honest about myself.
I’ve come to believe that the most important thing to do is to describe reality as accurately as possible, with the most precision you can muster. (And work into that model the assumption that you’re probably wrong about a bunch of things to some degree, in a way that you do not realize.) I borrowed this lens from my boss, and I used it initially as a sort of auxillary lens. Over time I’ve found that it’s been of great help to me, so it’s quickly becoming my primary lens.
My problems have not changed. I have been talking about the need for focus and routine sincw 2009, perhaps earlier- maybe even 2007. These aren’t new realisations. This has been a recurring problem. And the first thing about recurring problems is that they can’t be solved simply, just by taking a single action at the surface level of the problem. Perhaps there may be a one-step solution, but it’s buried at a deeper level. (Ie if you end up smoking because your friends smoke, you can’t just say no once. You have to say no every single time. The one-step solution might be to leave the country permanently. That sort of thing. Simple doesn’t mean easy or cheap.)
There’s a long list of things I know that I should do… That I don’t do. One of them is to write on my phone (or on pen/paper) instead of at the computer. The reasons are not clear, but empirically I just work better without an internet connection. That might be the single best thing I can do for myself. I don’t know why I’m so stubborn. I just know that I am, and that’s a non-negotiable reality of my existence. And every day I try to negotiate, pretend that it might be different this time. And every day is the same. It’s boring. We need to plot a prison break from this monotone.