I did something kind of surprising and indulgent today: I bought a new macbook air. it’s not the first time i’ve thought about it, but the idea typically arises and passes, I thought of it as “something I’d do when I have much more money”. Most recently I mentioned to my wife a couple of days ago that I’d like to have a second macbook. I picked up our ipad and tried typing on it and i didn’t really like the experience. there are a bunch of tasks i’d like to perform that I feel are best done with a keyboard and a browser (and maybe a touchpad or mouse, i’m not super picky).
I’m writing this wordvomit on the new macbook, kind of to “break it in”. I don’t like that word. to christen it? yes, much better. A part of me is so worried– has always been worried, I think– about being someone who just acquires gear as a consumer. I remember as a teenage musician with very little money reading about “gear acquisition syndrome” or GAS, about how people would just buy all sorts of gear and then not even particularly use it. Buy games and not play them, buy books and not read them. I found that to be deeply distasteful, so much so that I think I overcorrected in the opposite direction and made a virtue out of living in scarcity. I wouldn’t say I’m a minimalist per se. I think an enlightened minimalist tries to make sure that everything they own is something that really matters to them. And a “addictive” minimalist tries to just get rid of as much stuff as possible – apparently Marie Kondo actually started out like this herself until she had a nervous breakdown, before she received a vision that set her on the path to “spark joy”.
I have a bunch of stuff. I don’t go out of my way to get stuff, but when stuff comes my way I pretty much just grab it. And… it’s hard to talk openly about all my stuff, because my stuff is also my wife’s stuff, and as my audience grows it gets harder to talk about myself. I have a few options here. I could just not talk about it. That’s not very fun. I could write about it privately first, and then share it with my wife and ask her if she’d be ok with me sharing it. Some part of me flinches at the thought of this, but actually from conversations with my wife I do believe that she’d be very open to having such conversations with me. So it’s like… I’m limiting myself internally, psychologically…
I think this is a common theme in my life across several dimensions. When I finally published a substack essay yesterday after about a month and a half, I found myself thinking about how… wow i lost my train of thought there. one of the things i was thinking about the substack essay is that it could’ve been diagrammed better. I think that’s the simplest way of thinking about it. “Are you serious” was an essay that I ended up diagramming, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people agree it’s possibly my best essay, and that it’s the most popular of all the essays on my substack. so why don’t i diagram my essays more? idk… i’m tired? I may have been doing a lot of aversion and avoidance to avoid the idea that i need something like a vacation maybe. But no I think… what I need is not rest, but dynamic movement. I’m tense and tight and knotted and I need to unknot myself. that does mean doing a bunch of deleting.
deleting blogposts: I felt a big relief from deleting loads of blogposts yesterday, and I feel like I learned some things about what my blog used to be, and how I used to think… I’ve been frustrated and annoyed with my blog for a very long time, and I’ve never really sat down— wait, that’s not true, I have sat down on multiple occasions. I was gonna say, I’ve never “really” sat down to “process” it, to make sense of it all, to feel out what I’m really trying to do with it, what the goals are, and so on. It’s sort of a vague confusing mess that I feel bad about. But I can’t delete it because I deeply regret the last time I deleted a bunch of blogposts. But- well. Where does my blog fit now in relation to my substack? and my twitter? and my youtube? I have so many things going on. What is the proper gestalt of all the things? What are the synchronicities?
So yea maybe not a vacation, maybe more like… an honest assessment of all the things. But I do want to recognize that I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DO IT. In some sense it’s the main thing I’ve been trying to do for the past 2 years or so. And I think pushing harder doesn’t work. I’d like to be gentler and more curious about myself. I’d like to acknowledge and accept that I’ve been trying my best. That things take time. I definitely have been “uncharacteristically” harsh on myself lately – less harsh than I used to be when I was younger, so that’s progress, but more harsh than I’ve been say in recent years, which is less than ideal. But again I know there’s no point getting mad about it. Maybe I oughta reread old word vomits. But I’m not sure I particularly feel strongly about that right now. I think I’ll get to it sometime. But in the meantime I wanna… say thank you and goodbye to anything I feel comfortable saying thank you and goodbye to. I need more sleep. I’m glad i got this new laptop. It feels like a contribution to a new beginning. I do feel like my thoughts are more fragmented and disjointed lately. Which might be a very recent thing because of the sleep. And also the “trying to do too many things all at once”, maybe. I could do with some clarification and condensation of intent. Take it slow. Bird by bird. One thing at a time. Anyway the best thing for now would be to wrap this up and go to bed.
I do wish this were more coherent. That’s something for me to work on, cheerfully. I get to make progress on this, that is a joy of my life, for real!! ok gn
final thought upon copying over – the new macbook i hope is symbolic of a renewed abundance mindset, a sense that i can increase my capacity to solve problems. alright goodnight