you have all these rules, and you think they'll save you

monospace passages taken from undoing the pain. sorry this is a very fragmented and sprawling post! i have too many drafts i want to finish before the end of the year

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all the ways in which you are not free, all your fears, all your anxieties, all your guilts, all your shames - these are also part of you. they cannot be separated from you. in seeking to free yourself, you will inevitably change yourself. your way of thinking, your likes and dislikes, your hopes and dreams, your way of being “you”, your “raison d’etre” - all of these things may change even without you intending them to. holding onto them too hard will keep you from being free.

be wary of this thought: “i want to become more free so that i can better achieve my concrete goals.” goals are often just the chains we have bound ourselves with as we wonder why it’s become so hard to move.

you may find new things to love altogether. are you prepared for this?

do you value freedom, joy, and love more than anything in your entire life?

yes? good.

then we can begin.

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a couple months ago i realized i was trapped in a Box. the Box was a set of expectations i’d imposed on myself without ever realizing it, and none of them made any sense! some examples:

• i thought piano was about playing the notes on the page correctly, so i would download sheet music for songs i liked that were too hard for me and then struggle very slowly to read through and play all the notes. it was not fun and i sounded awful. this continued until one day i remembered a) i will never be classically trained, nor do i want to b) why do i need to play all these notes someone else wrote when i’ve spent 2 years writing a cappella arrangements and learning music theory? c) my goal is to play music i like, not to play correctly! i should just read the score and play the version of it that best suits me

• for most of my life i thought running was about suffering. i would move my legs until i reached the familiar pace where the weight of my legs started to tire me out, and then i would think “well, looks like i’ve reached my running state” and maintain that pace moving forward. i equated running with that feeling of exertion and literally did not realize i could run faster until one day my friend pia bought me some very lightweight korean pants and the exertion diminished and i realized running is just moving your legs and you can tell your legs to move faster even if they feel heavy

• i also equated being productive in my research with sitting in front of my monitor and writing code, so i would spend a lot of time sitting in front of my monitor and trying to write code even when there wasn’t actually any high-priority code to write. it took me a while to realize i was wasting hours each week trying to roleplay productivity, and also that monitors (for me) are more of a cage than a productivity boost. nowadays i spend a lot less time trying to write code and a lot more time walking around thinking about research prioritization, and i think it’s resulted in faster progress

more generally i think the Box looks something like: you have some big-picture goal for how you want to be (eg. making good music) but the big-picture goal remains in the background while some proxy goal (eg. reading and playing sheet music) occupies your immediate attention. the proxy and big-picture goals are correlated but misaligned - taking steps towards the proxy gets you closer to the big-picture goal (especially when you’re just getting started), but optimizing too hard for the proxy can take you further from where you actually want to be. failure to realize your goals are proxies can lead to burnout as you think i’m trying so hard on things that i said were good for me, why is it not making me happier?

(some other proxies i’ve been fooled by over the past year include “meeting new people at parties” “getting a phd” “being in a relationship” “writing Important Blog Posts”)

i think the Box is especially problematic for me because i often feel the need to prove to myself that i’m working hard and spending my time well, and legible proxies are an easy way to convince myself of that. this also results in being Serious and suppressing the sillier / more child-like parts of myself. people who feel less of a need to prove themselves may not experience as much of the Box; i’m not sure

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if you’re here, you probably want to change your internal model. you may have tried to do this many times by suppressing the feelings you don’t like, by changing through internal pressure, by pushing back against yourself.

you may have noticed that this doesn’t work.

there is another approach. pay more attention to everything in the world around you except yourself. when you go for a walk look at the trees. look at the buildings. look at the sky. find something to appreciate about all of it.

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it’s no secret that one of my favorite people in the world, and also the individual who’s changed my life the most in the last five years, is my housemate marley. one thing she’s exceptionally good at is finding a way to enjoy situations that are objectively terrible, eg. going through three simultaneous (non-romantic) breakups while also thinking life is great

i did not understand this mentality until a recent two-week stretch when one of my Big Dreams was dashed and i also had to work nonstop for a paper deadline. i was heartbroken and stressed and exhausted all at once, and i didn’t have time to process any of the feelings, but i also found that part of me was deeply excited about it all? excited about heartbreak because it was great to have found something i really wanted, excited about the stress and exhaustion too because it meant things were happening. at some point i was complaining to marley and she replied this is the best part of life

a different perspective on this is that first-person-vincent can be having a terrible time, and third-person-vincent narrating the situation can decide to have a terrible time as well, but they can also decide to be happy or curious or excited about the plot. you can’t fight or suppress feelings, you can only decide whether or not you’ll appreciate them. i think people who fail to do this are simply not taking their lives seriously enough. the stroke episode in august was helpful for understanding that the alternative to all this isn’t feeling happy, it’s feeling nothing at all

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our lives are filled with all kinds of beautiful things made by all kinds of beautiful people. many of us have been taught to hide those feelings. or to cover them in layers of irony. or to find criticism to share instead. to lift ourselves up by putting down others. whenever you have a chance, practice the option to share your love. earnestly.

do not try to get anything in return. tell people how much you appreciate the things they do. how much you appreciate them being who they are.

you may not always get the response you want. that’s okay. because you’re not doing it in order to get a good response. you are doing it to become a more free person.

sharing your love is not for them. it is for you.

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a few weeks ago someone asked me if i find it unpleasant to hang out with people post-rejection, to which i have 3 responses:

• why is your pain tolerance so low?

• do you actually like people, or do you just like the idea of being together?

• (more seriously) the point of life is to spend time with people who make your life full! people i’m deeply attracted to consistently bring out the best possible version of me, so i will always want to keep spending time with them

i also realized that i’m something like 5x funnier around my housemates than around strangers. everything feels so much freer and more playful! which is actually a little annoying because i don’t need to be funny around my housemates (we already live together) while i would benefit from being funnier around new people (it would help with making friends). life would be very different if the best versions of me showed up when i most needed them instead of when i was most happy, but i think there’s not much i can do about that other than learn to be happier

earlier this year i wrote about how the generator-discriminator dynamic from machine learning also applies to humans - as in, some people are naturally generative (come up with lots of ideas, often low-quality, but can see the goodness lying dormant in ideas that look bad), others are naturally discriminative (can quickly point out flaws and assess which ideas are better than others), and you need both halves to consistently produce great work

i’m a very good discriminator and have been trying to become a better generator, mostly by hanging out with generative people and trying more new things. i think it’s working? and along the way i’ve realized that some of the reasons i became such a good discriminator are rooted in: fear of the unknown, fear of embracing something different, fear of finding new things i love so much that they uproot my entire life. part of me is excited about all the unknown unknowns i’ve yet to encounter, but another part of me feels threatened by them. of course all this fear is silly and i need all the great ideas i can get my hands on and i should love the world harder and be less critical!! i am trying my best

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do you want to learn to play an instrument? it’s easy to imagine how nice it would be to play it well some day.

but you must also be able to enjoy today, a day when you cannot yet play it well.

if you spend your entire life doing nothing but chasing dreams you will never be happy.

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sometimes i enter a state where i’m extremely self-critical and aware of my deficiencies. i feel like i’ve squandered my entire life and am totally unprepared for the future, and then i spiral for a bit, and then i try to do some planning to remedy things. unfortunately the plans are almost never helpful

as a small example - it used to be the case that if i really wanted a social interaction to go well i would plan out some questions to ask, anecdotes to share, and so on. after trying this for some months i realized that there was basically no correlation between how much i planned and how well the social interaction went. in fact i experimented with many things and the only thing that seemed to have any correlation with social interaction quality was how much i smiled. the part of me that wanted to control the conversation was not actually capable of getting the outcomes it wanted, so i’ve been trying to let go more

more generally i think the only real way to make progress on your problems is by doing things you love and losing yourself in action. it must be done through joy, not grief. i am stuck grieving in my head far too often and need to get out more! simple procedures that collect lots of feedback do much better than complicated procedures that collect little feedback (in machine learning at least…). one time i was fixing a sewing machine with my mech-e friend brian and i watched him spool threads and disassemble components, making decisions faster than i could process what was happening and getting more done every ten seconds than i would in a minute (and it was also the most attractive thing i’ve ever seen a guy do), and i thought holy shit, this is what it means to truly iterate and make progress