For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils.

Ending is better than mending.

I’m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I’ve got something important to say and the power to say it – only I don’t know what it is, and I can’t make any use of the power.

Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the private paradise of dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand of the electric clock above his bed jumped forward with an almost imperceptible click. Click, click, click, click … And it was morning. Bernad was back among the miseries of space and time. It was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across to his work at the Conditioning Centre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedently heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.

(more…)

The urge to excel and the urge to lead aren’t the same. Sometimes I think they may be opposites.

You could tell a lot about a society by what topics of conversation came up.

Beauty was the promise of happiness, not happiness itself; and the anticipated world was often more rich than anything real. but this time who could say? This time might be the golden one at last.

Mutual professional respect, a great maker of friendships.

People didn’t understand that true intimacy did not consist of sexual intercourse, which could be done with strangers and in a state of total alienation; intimacy consisted of talking for hours about what was most important in one’s life.

So probably she would not want to find any such evidence. Would that disinclination bias her work? Well, sure. If not consciously, then deeper. Consciousness was just a thin lithosphere over a big hot core, after all. Detectives had to remember that.

(more…)

Think of a young Eddie Van Halen practicing guitar six, seven, eight hours a day. Think of how hard it is for you to remain focused on a single task for, what, 30 minutes? So really let that EVH practice quantity sink in. Then consider that even after becoming the greatest guitar player in the world, Eddie didn’t relax. He would get off tour and seamlessly transition into ever more practice – with no time off. Nonetheless, he made mistakes while playing. Certainly during live shows when you only get one take, but EVH also missed notes on studio records where infinite retries are permitted.

Now think of yourself going into a hard conversation, how you want it to go perfectly. And then remember that hard conversations permit no real practice. Maybe you internally rehearse what you’ll say, but that’s about it – nothing close to the thousands of practice runs Eddie gets. Then further appreciate that hard conversations are hard, in part, because they are so unique. Like, it’s not every day you console someone who lost a loved one, or have to tell a partner you aren’t happy, or bring up the fact that you strongly disagree with a leader’s actions. So in addition to nonexistent practice, you are also without live experience to draw upon. In a sense, you are being thrown on stage with a vague idea of how the guitar works and expecting yourself to play Eruption. 

Don’t be absurd. Lower your expectations. A lot. When you replay the conversation and long to have said something different, remember that you aren’t Eddie, that you couldn’t have practiced, that your total reps in such conversations are staggeringly small, and that even if none of that is true, that you are, indeed, Eddie Van Halen, errors would still find you.

Citizen 78998238733209497832631265872334793274932

Citizen 56263648733420979312047132907213901279737

——–

Bad ideas: good

Good ideas: terrific

No ideas: terrible

As previously stated, King World XVIII is a thinking man. He is also a man of action. Sometimes, these two traits can seem at odds. For if one stays too mired in thought, one never acts, and if one remains too consumed by action, one never thinks. But for anyone who actually makes consequential decisions, there is no onerous tension at all. You simply parry the insatiable desire to learn just a tad more by accepting imperfect information and choosing a path forward. Sometimes that path proves golden. Sometimes it doesn’t. Both outcomes are far preferable to a situation devoid of ideas wherein paralysis ensues.

(more…)

Citizen 78998238733209497832631265872334793274932

Citizen 56263648733420979312047132907213901279737

——–

Pre-4.15.20 Rule HJ8945, you would have been afforded understanding and sympathy when the world’s winds blew against you. While it’s true that there are always people worse off, it’s just as true that there are always people better off. In moments of challenge, it’s easier to default to the latter perspective – I’m not as smart as person X, I’m not as healthy as person Y, I’m not as charismatic as person Z, etc. – to make failure palatable. And we, the rest of the world, were okay with this arrangement. Key word there is “were.” Please notice that it is in past tense, for the world’s okayness officially expired with the passage of 4.15.20 Rule HJ8945 and your excuses, however legitimate, will no longer be tolerated.

(more…)

I didn’t catch it at first, but I now realize that something important was left unexplained from our last conversation. You, a man of high self-awareness, contended that your risk-aversion holds you back in matters of love. This didn’t strike me as true since an obvious manifestation of risk-aversion is settling for a “good enough” girl who checks many boxes and provides undeniable aid against loneliness – and you don’t do this. You, in fact, are likely to hear pleas from friends to be “less picky” and other such well-intentioned nonsense that risk-averse individuals utter to risk-lovers. I guess xxxxxxxxx simply had a blind spot in his self-model and risk-aversion isn’t plaguing him.

But that’s too easy a conclusion, right? You have thought about yourself and love a lot, and surely you considered that which I noticed in 60 seconds:

(more…)

if you didn’t have a problem to solve?

Well, for one thing, you would be bored. And given the undesirability of such a state, perhaps the tenor with which we discuss problems should be changed to one of appreciation (for the purpose problems provide) as opposed to wishing the problem would instantly resolve.

The above connotation shift is not a suggestion for intractable problems, for problems that may well never have a solution. In these unfortunate scenarios, there are no longer steps to take, books to read, experiments to run – there is just suffering.

But is your problem actually unsolvable? A temptation exists to label a problem in this fashion to excuse oneself of responsibility. Then again, if one can’t walk away from the problem, the whole suffering thing should dissuade the act of submitting to temptation too easily. Still, a simple test should usually suffice: can a stranger informed of your problem instantly derive actions worth trying? If so, you are far from exhausting possibilities, so dig in and embrace the purpose. If not, well, ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

you changed my mind re: *ghosting*.

the key insight was you yourself taking control of the situation
and deciding that, no matter what, fuck this other person. (though i still wonder a bit how this attitude can exist with a desire for future friendship.)

if you can get to that place, a place no longer filled with wanting, it truly doesn’t matter what the other person does – his/her actions are now irrelevant.

i do think it can be hard to get to that place, especially in the inevitable messiness of a courting process.

but even if you don’t get there, it’s not like you would gain some great insight w/ the non-ghost, w/ the “sorry, this just isn’t right for me.” this is probably the area where i’m most incorrect: i do want other people’s truths about me because i want to close off blindspots and improve if i deem one’s evaluation of me correct, but ain’t nobody gonna really give me that type of truth. instead, you’ll just get a nondescript text response that carries the same value as ghosting.

if you absolutely require others for closure or peace or validation, you will forever be in a state of unrest.

still, i wouldn’t ghost anyone, but i now have a far more accepting attitude toward those that do.

thx!

“I want to give you money. Please let me do so. Hell, I’ll even mail you an envelope with the proper address and postage on it and all you’ll have to do is slip the gift certificate in and drop it in the mail.”

For however great Dan and his crew may be at crafting pizzas, they are quite terrible at business, because even with my desperate plea, Dan’s Pizza refused to let me purchase a gift certificate.

When Dan’s goes out of business,¹ we can safely ignore pandemic-based excuses since we’ll know that horrendous management was the real reason for the Chapter 11.

But that filing remains a future event, so please enjoy the pizza while you still can. And please do so on my dollar. Just shoot me the total and I’ll take it from there.²

If Dan has any good sense left, he’ll try to hire you two the moment you step into his restaurant; anybody who can untotal a totaled car can surely figure out a simple system for collecting money from those who want to give it.

Thanks for the heroic effort getting the Miata safely back on the road.

just not too much.

This is how one can honestly claim, “I don’t like games in dating,” while also being turned off by the far-too-direct suitor who doesn’t “play games.”

Finding the perfect line where one shows enough “want” without coming across as “wanting” is the stuff of magic.

Some guesses as to why such a line exists:

1. For all but the most narcissistic, it’s natural to doubt oneself. Hence, it is nice to hear compliments. However, too many compliments are a bit suspicious: Doesn’t this other person know how flawed I am? Is he/she just lying?
2. There are perks to being a big fish in a small pond. So, it’s common for pleasure to be derived from liking another person slightly less than he/she likes you. There is power in this discrepancy. A too-large gap, though, indicates something in the perception of a shared reality is off and you may be settling for a très tiny fish.
3. We want what we can’t have.
4. Endless attention can be exhausting and downright uncomfortable. Plus, ceaseless unreciprocated attention shows a certain lack of awareness in the suitor, which is an unquestionably unattractive trait.