2024-05-29
- A while ago, I went to dinner in France with a group of people. The group contained people I’d never met. I asked one of them, “what are you getting up to these days?” And she responded that she teaches psychiatry/psychotherapy at “a school in Boston.” I responded playfully, “oh, that’s cool, what’s new in psychotherapy? What came after Freud?” And then she gave a response that was very hard to understand. It was almost classically academic in that it refused to engage with the playfulness of the question at all, and got lost in irrelevant details about how Freud was bad or something. I think this kind of thing is a real bummer, and a real missed opportunity. I would much rather, in the setting of a casual dinner party, contribute and receive information that is “not quite right” and also playful vs “pedantically correct” and dry. I’ll add here that I generally had a lovely time at dinner with this woman and the rest of the group. This isn’t a general shortcoming. It came up in an
area where it comes up for most people: talking about their (often intellectual) work. And then a similar thing happened again, more recently, when we had some friends over for brunch. One of them is an artist, and I asked them how their art was going and what they thought was interesting etc etc etc. These were, I hoped, real softball questions that could be engaged with casually. Unfortunately, no. This person also refused to play with these ideas, and mostly struggled to say anything at all, seemingly trapped by a requirement to give the most sophisticated, deep response to a question at brunch. Again, I don’t think it’s bad to shoot for the deepest/most sophisticated intellectual relationship with your work. I do this in many areas, too, at least historically (e.g if someone asks me about flashcards in the past 5 years, I would struggle to return that serve in a light, accessible way). Of course, now I think of this stuff as just a missed opportunity. It’s brunch, not a PhD
defense. The medium, as always, is the message. Anyways, the point here is to note that I appreciate it when people can talk about their interests in a light, playful, accessible way. And I’m going to start consciously working on contributing that vibe myself. I think this is an excellent use case for this micro-blog: practicing telling stories about my life in a lighter/accessible way.
- Another cloudy day in LA. Good for a warm latte.
- Time for bed. A brief recap. Had a lovely morning blogging at the coffee shop. A friend visited and we continued exploring whether it will make sense for me to join as a technical cofounder at his startup (likely no, but worth exploring bc I have the itch and this is a good opportunity). Shipped some code. Was weirdly obsessive in my checking of emails about the outcome of recent interviews. Felt like my regular checking was out of proportion to how much I am excited about the outcomes (my excitement level is “some!” But I was checking basically every incoming email as if my life depended on it). Didn’t exercise, again. Foolish. Probably the only thing I would change about my time off is fixing this and getting back into a more serious exercise habit. Alas, the best time was back then, second best time is now. Had an early ravioli dinner with E. Got them raviolis and pesto from Costco and boy did Kirkland deliver! Went for an early eve walk with E after dinner, lovely. Did a small
amount of practicing piano, learned first part of Jamming by Bob Marley. Have really gotten into Bob Marley recently. Truly excellent vibes. He’s actually pretty famous, too. Well deserved, I’d say. Played bananagrams in the eve with friends who happen to live down the street from us in LA. Small world. And now writing before bed. Life is good.
Date
May 29, 2024