talking with Trinh about Justin’s abundance mindset and how he convinced me to entertain their offer in late 2023 with “but what if it goes right”, after I sent him a list of cons (he reacted with “yah ur not wrong on any of these lmao”)
what are my highest happiness-roi spends? mebbe treadmill, shuttlecocks, dog, leica, flight to visit friends
talking with chelsea about the number of friends we each had (and nish)
talking with nish about the times we were most frustrated with our parents (both mom’s for us hah)
what are my most formative moments ever?
going to GATE and being competitive
grinding for the AI4Youth “internship” and realizing how linear effort/time was
learning about people like Liao on Kaggle and no longer feeling limited by age
winning ETH NYC and the accompanying job offers, realizing that there were things that could happen which were better than I could have ever expected
going to LA and realizing that I was super insanely undersocialized
people i met out of complete insanely unlikely happenstance
mark, eugene
why don’t I find enjoyment out of consuming fiction anymore? there was a time when I loved Alex Rider, Warriors, etc.
what is my “fuel”? looking for positive prediction error?
I can’t rationally think this, while also doubting if I’d transition well to anything. Believing this must require believing that “gold shines anywhere” — that I’d be good at anything I put my effort into.
roon’s “greatness is transitory”
theory of money?
Once heard a story about Carl Jung. There was this American businessman who made it when he was 40. He dreamed his whole life of making it and retiring. He had a beautiful young family, he was travelling Europe with them and loving life, and he fell into a depression and his wife forced him to see Jung. So the psychologist looks at it very closely and talks to him and says that it’s really common; “the achievement once achieved is a source of torment because the struggle is more beautiful than the achievement”. And there are so many young people making life-changing wealth, and some handle it better than others because it’s such a massive shock. But it’s always better to not let monetary value define who you are because as humans, we intrinsically find more value in the struggle than the achievement. The idea of achievement itself is a modern idea; if you think about the hunter gatherer, he does not achieve, he simply hunts and he eats and he enjoys his time with his tribe. It’s a different worldview. The idea of achievements is unnatural and the fixation on them and especially the achievement causes the happiness is a modern belief that creates mass sadness because the achievement causes no more happiness than the journey to it. There is beauty in the struggle, and the best memories are always when winter is just starting, and you look back, and you almost wish you could be there again.
that one super conversation with 5/9 about elections2033
Talking to the dentist assistant about her anxiety on planes and travelling and escalators, and how they sold their Okanagan cabin after I complimented her for being well-travelled
Why my bio is “cultivating freudenfreude”
A 2024 retrospective
I’ve been living like an adult for a while, but this is the first year I’ve really felt like one.
