It is 8:45.
I am feeling inspired to write.
The room is glowing with reflected sunlight. I awoke in a panic as usual, and immediately reached for my phone to cure my anxiety. I relaxed into the blue light, pulled down from the top of my screen to look at my notifications. Seeing nothing, but still in a panic, I systematically checked each and every group chat. Discord, a few messages, interesting, noted. I check every channel frantically, I am a duck inhaling dog food from a frisbee. Whatsapp, nothing. Twitter, wait, what are people saying? They’re still debating whether it is “okay” to “give a four year old a screen”? Jesus Christ, do these people have anything better to do with their lives than to debate underspecified premises all day every fucking day until the sun burns out? Obviously the quality of the screen time matters — a child who is using an iPad to text their grandparents is going to learn to read and write and type from a young age, which are valuable skills. A child who is using an iPad as a portal to an advertiser-monetized emotional pacifier, fragmenting their attention by watching and scrolling through whatever the algorithm serves up — wait.
What am I doing right now?
I literally just woke up.
The birds are singing outside my window, it is 55 degrees and sunny, a cool breeze blows through my open balcony door.
I briefly consider putting on a podcast or watching a video because something about this moment is difficult right now. What is it?
Oh right, I need to decide what to do today because I just woke up. And deciding is hard, because I want to do so many things, and I have already wanted to do so many things in the past which I have failed to do.
I want to write, I want to practice the guitar, I want to place the remainder of my engineering students in professional jobs, I want to learn, I want to read The Golden Thread, oh but also I want to finish that Operating Systems course I started, and I want to continue designing that social media game I’ve been making. Oh, there are so many things I want to say, wow! I have a couple drafts I need to finish, because Daniel asked me to write him an essay helping people who use AI badly and then say that the tool is bad understand that the tool isn’t bad, it’s just a new tool and there is a lot to learn to wield it well. Oh, and Xiq asked me to write that essay about how we manage to normalize new engineers to engineering culture so they are so productive every day, by default, without any coercion. Concepts are so interesting — the idea of an essay, you know? It’s like, if you are able to string together the right set of propositions and explanations, you can just change history. Should essays mainly be about communicating feelings, or should they be about communication propositions, or truth statements, and explaining them? What about my notes? I wonder how I should organize my thoughts — wait.
What am I doing right now? Is this what it is like in here every day?
I am still in bed. I still haven’t decided what I am going to do today. It has been 5 minutes.
Alright, I have decided, I am going to write today. I have been looking forward to writing for literally 2 years now, and just in the last few weeks I have freed up enough of my time to devote myself to my own ideas. The first work I do today will be writing, specifically I will open my Obsidian wiki and I will garden some new ideas (spoilers: I made it to my Obsidian wiki, which is where I am typing this now, hello audience!). If I do this gardening work every day, my wiki will become a place I love to occupy, and I already feel excited to be there because of the gardening I’ve been doing over the last few weeks. Phew, glad that is settled.
I guess I need to get out of bed, get dressed, take a shower, and then walk to Smor, my local cafe-bakery, where I will enjoy an auto-lexical orientation to the clamor of my neighbors and, unfortunately, their dogs.
I flick open my curtains and smile at the sun, decide to wear a regular uniform — khaki button-down shirt, olive pants, brown braided-leather belt, cream American socks, and a willow mens jacket. Professorial. I designed this particular wardrobe motif to evoke my favorite engineering professors from my education, all of whom worked in defense at one point or another — think an electrical engineer who was working on radar and radio technology for DARPA, or an ex-airforce engineer who had a garage workshop that was better equipped than many engineering colleges.
I pass a full-body mirror on my way to the bathroom and notice my shoulder tension. I notice the extra 30 pounds I’ve put on since becoming a father — I am 5’9” and weigh 170 when I used to weigh 140. I notice the missing muscle definition in my chest and arms, definition which I lost years ago. I am almost overcome with grief for my body, and for the limited years of youth I have left, if I can be said to have any more youth at 28. Why do I cultivate this particular body? I know what it is like to use my body daily for calisthenics, because that’s how I originally built the meager but pleasant muscle of my early 20s. Using my body is enjoyable, I know it’s enjoyable! I sigh, confused. I am unable to untangle the clues to this mystery right now, but I take the moment to gaze at my body, to feel what it is like to use and maintain this body as the main vessel and representation of my being. It is an unpleasant feeling, filled with remorse and wasted potential. I don’t distract myself, because it’s important that I know this, I cannot look away now. I resolve to master the daily maintenance and improvement of my body, but not today, I have already decided that today is about writing.
The warm water flows over me. I wonder what kind of writer I am. I used to compare myself to Feynman and other scientist-engineers, but I have grown into more of an educator-organizer-philosopher-entrepreneur, like Montessori, or… Socrates? Am I like Socrates? I certainly enjoy talking more than writing. His idea of philosophy is fascinating. Love of Wisdom, where Wisdom is two things: knowledge of true things, and the practical knowledge of how to get those true things. Reminds me a bit of Aristotle’s ideas of value and virtue — value as that which one acts to gain or keep, and virtue as the means by which one acts to gain or keep it. You know, these concepts and definitions are so interesting, I should write them down in my Lexicon. My thoughts are often shaped like noticing concepts, but not necessarily making novel truth statements, which seems more valuable. Andy Matuschak’s notes are often very propositional, he is making claims, like ”- Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills much more rigorously than knowledge workers do”, or “Core practices in knowledge work are often ad-hoc”. Whereas my notes are often just noting some thoughts, like “On a Theory of Objective Value” (what is the theory?) or “On Personal Websites” (what about them?). I do this because I often have many disparate things I want to say on these topics, and I have yet to break out each of those things into its own note. Instead of breaking out the most important propositions in my personal philosophy and publishing explanations, I am mainly listing propositions, thoughts, feelings. I’m yapping. I would like my published notes to make more truth statements. Well then, what is it I believe about Personal Websites anyway? I want people to understand the anatomy of a website. But also I want people to understand the philosophy of a website. “Websites are Cave Paintings”, you know? Like, a website is a way to say “I am here”, forever, and then to put it in the internet archive and to be preserved for all of time, forever and ever and ever until the collapse of our civilization, and maybe beyond that. But also “Personal Websites are Personal Embassies”, right? Because a personal website is a way for any alien being in the entire Intergalactic Network to communicate with YOU at any time. It’s really quite incredible. Would you like an embassy entirely dedicated to helping people work with you, understand you, help you, communicate with you? You can have that, it’s called a personal website — wait.
The stream of consciousness is so rapid that I am nearly overwhelmed. How many different thoughts did I visit just now? What did I originally want to write about again?
I have a vague feeling that if I could just write down what is true, what I know to be true, that I could change my entire world. How powerful is a concept? A concept can change everything. You could say Socrates invented the modern concept of philosophy — at the very least, his concept of philosophy will live in the world forever. And some concepts can destroy us. There are useful concepts, concepts which increase my ability to achieve my values, concepts which make me aware of my affordances. I know I have so many useful concepts, but how do I write them down? Where do I start? And once I have them, how do I communicate them? Wait, is this a book? “A Book Is A Serialized Cluster of A Concept Graph”. What Concept Graph do I want to make? I want to help young people get from “here to there”, specifically to go from un-liberated to liberated, in the sense of The Liberal Arts. How can people feel liberated to pursue their virtues and values in their society? How can we scale this to everyone on Earth? Surely it is a set of concepts, like a series of books or essays, or pleas. I know I can help with some of these themes, major ones, like ADHD, procrastination, depression, love and romance, friendship, career, computer mastery, social media addiction, YouTube, Gaming, politics, community, education. I am a product of my times, I have lived through all of these problems and built (or am building) personal solutions to each and every one of them — wait.
I should write this down.
I turn off the shower. While I dry off, I retrace my thoughts so I might remember them when I sit down to write. God, there were so many. I have lost so many already. I’m emotional. Saline production creates a micron-thick film over my cornea. Why am I thinking about the anatomical specifics of crying right now? The tears are drained into my nasal passages by my puncta before they can overflow from my lower lid, but the saline production continues, encouraged by my parasympathetic nervous system, which I cannot feel nor see, so to me it is merely an abstraction, a concept. I am crying. I feel grief that I won’t ever be able to explain myself. I have and lose too many ideas in a single shower to ever have a hope of explaining myself. I want to give up. I don’t know what to do. I feel myself spiraling — wait.
What am I doing right now?
I let myself feel the last of the grief, then quietly smile to myself because grief is, after all, the surest sign of love. I must love my ideas very much… oh, I do love them… they have never left me. They have led me through every difficulty I have ever faced. They are my eternal companions…
I am crying again.
The beauty of it all is too much. Every good character in every book, every piece of wisdom, every inspired song. I am visited by the very idea of Good Ideas (is that you, God?) and in this moment it is proven to me that I have Good Ideas, too. After all, what is this idea, if not a Good one?
I linger there and dress myself. Finally, my mind is quiet, at least for this moment. I pack my bag in silence, and head out.
It is 9:30.