Scattered thoughts, 17 January 2024

Scattered thoughts that I can’t be bothered to write a full blog post about. This was a nice and relieving task, so I might do this again in the future.

Self-care is other people care

I’ve been sleeping poorly this past week, and I feel that I’ve been less effective as a teacher because of it. In my head I often think of pushing myself to my limits for the sake of others, but ultimately it’s a bit stupid to think that because if you aren’t functional, you kind of have to fix that before you can effectively help other people.

I used to ask myself “if I want to help others, then shouldn’t I just starve myself to death and donate all my money to charity?”. (No one in school was doing this, which is part of the reason I found all those volunteering clubs shallow.) Sounds and is ridiculous, yes, but the point was 1. minimize your resource consumption and 2. maximize your resource contribution. I do try to keep the minimum as low as possible, but I’m trying to be a little better about treating myself and, well, not literally or metaphorically starving to death.

Do I work too hard?

Maybe. I think the more exact question is “am I trying to use work to cover up a lack of something more important in my life?”. Work can genuinely matter to me and I can enjoy and find meaning in my work, but it can also be true that I am using it to mask a problem.

The thing that goes through my head is “If I were somewhere in North America right now, I would…” and then a laundry list of things I would do (attend a local writing / coding club, find an exercise group, go dating, etcetera) that aren’t possible, are more energy than I think they are worth, or otherwise don’t really make sense for me to do in my small little city in northeastern Poland. Maybe that’s invalid and I’m doing a bad job of integrating into my community? I guess I’m tired of transient relationships and things that end before they can really become a part of my life, and I don’t really want to bother with them if I can avoid it.

In my head, I want to settle down somewhere, plant roots, and have somewhere to call home for a long time. I don’t want to put a lot of effort into anything (including activites, relationships, and ) that won’t be in that “home” because I can’t really bring that over with me. Ultimately, this leaves work and my technical skills as the most reasonable thing to focus on before finding and arriving at that place.

Is that sensible? It doesn’t feel that sensible for some reason. I should try to make the most out of this “before” time, because the experiences I have here can carry over back to home (unless traveling is pure hedonism and doesn’t teach you anything?); and it’s not true that any relationships I make now are guaranteed to die after I leave. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m socially exhausted and need something more guaranteed / a more reliable safe space. I don’t think my current approach is bad, but I don’t think it’s optimal.

I do not like nihilism

Too cynical for me. I was described as a nihilist recently and it stung way more than I thought it would. To me, nihilism says “welp, may as well lie down in a ditch and pass away”, and if that was the correct way to go about things then why aren’t we just doing that? I know optimistic nihilism is a thing, but I feel like if you’re going to be that positive you may as well decide on a purpose, right?

I think I fall more between existentialism and absurdism, maybe absurdism because I do agree that the universe doesn’t give a crap what I do. I think generally, I don’t try to fit my life philosophy in pre-defined blocks like this (although I get that it can be helpful and save some work to learn what people have thought about in the past).

Going for the jugular, but as a friend

I’ve noticed I try to skip straight to the deep stuff when I want to become closer with someone, which usually manifests as oversharing / being a bit much. I suppose this is okay in 1-1 settings if you have known someone a while, but I feel like I can be pretty disruptive and awkward if I try to do this. I typically maintain an air of aloofness, which really is a wall that I’m setting up between my genuine feelings about life and the face I put up for people who I don’t fully trust / have much investment in.

I feel like most people immerse themselves with each other at a shallow level before making any attempt to go deeper - at least, that’s how I imagine it works with social media. But then again, I also feel like what other people tend to value in me is the introspection and the thoughtfulness rather than relating to what I do day-to-day (teach, code, play video games, sing, eat, sleep, and a few other things). I think most new potential friends would be relatively uninterested in me if I presented myself at a more shallow, comprehensible level; my social circle would stay restricted to engineers and vaguely artsy types (not the professionals because I am not on their level). I guess I don’t want that? Not sure what I’m saying here.

I do like this title, hehe. I might use it again if I can.

Reverse goals

I realize I have been setting goals in reverse: I set the objective but don’t really lay out the path to get there. For example, I set a goal a while ago to “contribute to Godot”, and the thing I think about is getting PRs accepted; I’m not thinking about the process of trying things out in Godot and talking with people and developing the fluency to achieve those results. I think I generally have a hard time visualizing the path unless it’s something relatively hand-holding like a textbook or course notes; this might be owing to the fact I recently graduated.

Goals should certainly include a desired result, but I think I mentally skip over the whole learning process and place an expectation on myself to immediately go in and figure it out. This is unrealistic with any project that already has significant roots, and I think I need to rethink how I am setting goals for myself.