Got up and immediately ran 10mi. I felt actively “light” for the first time, probably since I lost ~3-4lbs since the last time I ran about 2 weeks ago thanks to the wisdom-teeth-removal-caused liquid only diet. Yet I also wasn’t fit, ended up with 5:16/km at 158bpm. I was struggling at the start but it got easier at like 5km in. Funnily, vertical oscillation was also higher than usual (9.0cm vs 8.3cm) which supports the lightweight thesis.
I think I’m driving myself a bit insane. Like, quite a lot insane. I’m in my own head far too much. And the time’s just passing me by in ways I don’t understand. I’m going to try not to use my phone for an entire week starting tomorrow afternoon. I’ll bring my laptop more places, so I wouldn’t be less connected; hopefully just less distracted. I think my optimal phone would have chat apps, GPS, be able to tether LTE to my laptop, and nothing else; it’d be nice if it wasn’t even capable of viewing videos. Maybe that one e-ink Boox Palma phone is the way to go, but I’m too lazy to find out. Maybe I’ll get an iPhone 13 mini?
Anyways I’ve done just about nothing today and it’s 8pm. I finally have a kraken account, so I guess not literally nothing, but I can hardly count fabricating documents and emailing them to support as “productive”. I’m going for a goddamned walk.
Okay I yapped a voice memo for 1hr I feel better.
I was thinking about what I wrote yesterday with respect to why I (generally) relate more/enjoy SF people more than Calgary people. It’s been really hard to explain because it’s not some gap in commonality; I have had a much more similar upbringing to Calgary peeps than SF, and I’m especially more similar culturally (almost all of my SF friends are non-americans). My conclusion for now is that Calgary people I meet seem very content to live their lives as is, while SF people are not. They always want more. There’s always some aspect I’m discontent with, always something more to grind or find my way around. I don’t know why this doesn’t seem to be the case for most people I meet in Calgary, while it is true for the people in SF. Maybe it’s that Calgary has some of the most insane brain drain I’ve ever seen (literally none of you guys are in calgary, fml). But it makes me feel quite alien; these people also seem much happier than me, “living in the moment” and being much more satisfied. Not sure what to think of that, in some ways I’m jealous.
Maybe part of it is also what sunny said a while back; “Your self confidence is rooted in being really good at what you do and being better than those around you and you’re not used to that not necessarily being true/valued”. But this is kinda contradictory; the reason I love old friends so much is that I’m not known for my career, but who I am. Why is this a negative for the new people I meet? Is it that I’m respected less than I perceive I should be?
Why does this even matter to me? There are plenty of C-suite execs whose wives are stay at home moms and they have happy lives. They obviously did much better than I probably will. Why do I care? Why do they have great chemistry and I don’t? Is this too low sample size?
I guess my feeling of being respected less in Calgary is also my own projection because people don’t value ambition the way my online/SF communities do. They glorify ambition such that I garner a base level of respect. It’s not that I value ambition in others; moreso that it happens that others who are ambitious, also value ambitiousness in other people. But there are conceivably people who asymmetrically respect who I am, and yet, are not particularly ambitious themselves (it’s certainly not a precondition). The question is, how do I increase the proportion of the population for which this is true? Maybe the solution is to get good at shit that isn’t “finding fraud on chain optimally” but rather to be funny, empathetic, etc. enough to be respected for it? But that’s a damned high bar; I’m a bit talented such that being a 99th percentile dev is doable, but simultaneously being 99th percentile at something else is… a pretty high bar ngl…